The End of Oak Street is a fun — but flat — Spielberg clone
While The End of Oak Street is at times genuinely fun and somewhat original, there does seem to be something missing from what's been widely crowned the summer blockbuster we've all been waiting for.
Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor-led sci-fi delivers on the dinos — but not the story
Jackson Weaver · CBC News
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What are you most concerned about as a housewife in 1982? Is it that your kids are off making flirty eyes with their fellow teens or running from the local bully? Is it that your slightly-estranged husband refuses to man the barbecue because he's off to work the second job you asked him to quit?
Or just maybe, the things you're most worried about are the blue lights pulsating around town, the oppressive heat suddenly coursing through the atmosphere — and what looks like a dinosaur tail snaking through your backyard.
Welcome to the world of Oak Street — or as our housewife Denise (Anne Hathaway) and writer/director David Robert Mitchell so forebodingly put it, The End of Oak Street — where a mild-mannered (and deeply unhappy) family's neighbourhood is mysteriously relocated back in time to the late Jurassic period where they're forced to battle both the strange creatures outside their home and all their internal estrangement inside.
As a Spielbergian tale that simultaneously feels ripped straight from a Stephen King book, it certainly does deliver on the vibe.
From aloof but loving, functional-alcoholic father Greg (Ewan McGregor), to forlorn genius elder sister Audrey (Maisy Stella), to boy-next-door little brother Brian (Christian Convery), this Detroit family reads more non-threateningly middle-American than a Leave it to Beaver fourth of July special.
And if we're to believe what everyone and their film-critic mother has decided, it's the perfect recipe for an Amblin-style, B-movie love letter. That, even if it is a bit reductive, Oak Street's frank and straightforward sentimentality plays like the nostalgic 80s romp yearned for by audiences burnt out on self-serious, trauma-infused films.
If you're looking for a good time at the movies, what could go wrong with a straight-shooting, time-travelling dino flick?
WATCH | The End of Oak Street trailer:
As it would turn out, quite a lot actually.
Because while Oak Street is at times genuinely fun and somewhat original, there seems to be something missing from what's been widely crowned as the summer blockbuster we've all been waiting for.
Instead, it's more a going-through-the-motions type film that seems very aware of how classic Spielberg films looked and felt — but isn't necessarily aware of the artistic intent behind them.
It's the exact type of movie you'd expect to find at the centre of a controversy involving an AI-version of the family's dog being used to advertise the film on a fake podcast.
An interpretation of Jurassic Park that begins and ends by looking up through brachiosaurus legs — but features none of the hubris of man, critique of capitalism stuff.
A fascination with the kids-on-bikes-solving-mysteries aesthetics of E.T. — but without any awareness of the anti-xenophobia, government paranoia theme it all rests on.
In The End of Oak Street, that feeling catches up to you quickly.
In an almost impressive feat, the stakes set up for each character are juggled and discarded faster than pterodactyls ripping hunks from a portly man's chest cavity — a scene we do in fact get in Oak Street.
Will the movie focus on the idea of abandoned potential — set up by Denise's secretive attempts to launch a writing career with the help of an elderly retired editor down the street? Will it be about pursuing what you need to survive even in the face of overwhelming danger — a possibility brought up through Audrey's suggested crush on the neighbour girl?
Will it test how "moral" the average person really is when things get real — perhaps through Brian's borderline fanatical attention to the safety of his dog and the casual cruelty he doles out to neighbourhood friends?
The answer in The End of Oak Street is kind of yes — but actually, no. Aside from the fact that every member of this family seems to have a secret, any character trajectory is essentially thrown out the window the first time a dinosaur starts huffing and puffing.
Given the relatively truncated length (it clocks in at one hour, 39 minutes) and the protracted introductions for each family member, there's not much time left to do anything except show these half-developed characters screaming at therapods and sauropods of increasingly dubious design acting in increasingly dubious ways. Bet you've never seen dinosaurs get it on before.
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But the dinosaur attacks become less and less interesting due to absent character growth, repetitive action sequences and aped visual language. After the fourth or fifth time Brian runs from the fourth or fifth identically dangerous growling feathery thing, you start to ask yourself what we're really doing here.
And during a family conversation in which literally every member gets the Jaws split-diopter treatment for absolutely no narrative reason, it starts to feel more like a Spielberg tribute band is playing than the birth of a new talent.
Though all this does raise an important question: should it matter that this dinosaur disaster movie doesn't have a point? Maybe not — we're here for the spectacle after all, and for that you just need giant lizards with giant teeth ripping apart flaming cars.
The more insufferable among us might point out that it does matter because this idea has been done before, and better.
Kazuo Umezu's The Drifting Classroom featured a school inexplicably thrust into an apocalyptic future — clearly borrowing from Japan's post-atomic bomb fears. And 1983's Testament went through much of the same isolated neighbourhood horror to tell the story of a family surviving nuclear fallout in a setting eerily similar to the first half of Oak Street.
But leaving out any deep examination, something still feels like it's missing.
Because despite Oak Street's more or less engaging set pieces, audiences might find themselves checking their watches since the director hasn't given them any tangible reason to root for the heroes.
Or, maybe they won't care.
Maybe the simple fact that Oak Street looks and sounds somewhat like Spielberg movies will be enough — even if it seems like nobody who made it cared what those movies were saying.
And if that's the case, at least it's good news for the future of AI-written movies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jackson Weaver is a reporter and film critic for CBC's entertainment news team in Toronto. You can reach him at jackson.weaver@cbc.ca.
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