The End of Oak Street Review: Nostalgia Is a Trap

The End of Oak Street – or Temu Jurassic Park II, as it should probably be known – is a film out of time. Apt, since that’s the fate of its time-displaced residents of one Midwestern neighborhood, who find themselves displaced to the era of the dinosaurs.

In some random unnamed suburb of Detroit in 1982 dwells the atomic Platt family. They may as well be called the Whitebreads. Anne Hathaway plays mother and frustrated novelist Denise, Ewan McGregor is chirpy dad Greg, Maisy Stella is closeted daughter Audrey, and Christian Convery is son Brian, who owns a bow. That’s all you need to know about them. Each is given character notes – not fully-formed characters, just character notes – and when they suddenly find themselves and all their neighbors in some ahistorical mishmash of the Jurassic, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods, they run and scream and get separated and have Big Emotional Moments as some random neighbor gets eaten in the background. Honestly, all four family members should have been eaten at least once during the film for gross acts of stupidity.

There are moments that are supposed to be funny, but often not in the way that writer/director David Robert Mitchell seems to think. The T. rex tiptoeing up on the family across a neatly manicured lawn in broad daylight may win the award for this year’s silliest scene. Paleontologists may be briefly thrilled that the dinosaurs are at least a little more in line with current scientific understanding, especially when it comes to which species were feathered. Yet they will probably roll their eyes at the idea of a Coelophysis coexisting with an Ankylosaurus, or the sauropods sporting Afghan hound-style coats. As for the giant gummi worm snake, the less said, the better. Indeed, the most visually striking period-specific dressing of the film is the wonderful array of midcentury time capsule houses that form the neighborhood. So while paleontologists may fume, architectural historians will at least have some distractions.  

The influence of producer J.J. Abrams – less a filmmaker, more a random assemblage of film references – is clear; a better businessman than storyteller, here he once again soullessly raids the tombs of Amblin. There was a time when that word wasn’t just the name of Steven Spielberg’s production company but a filmmaking aesthetic that summed up childhood wonder. Instead, Abrams is yet again given the money to enable a mockbuster on a blockbuster budget. Even the score by Michael Giacchino sounds jarringly like Jerry Goldsmith clumsily pastiching John Williams, and there’s a moment that soullessly apes the famous first shot of the Brachiosaurus from Jurassic Park but with a juvenile twist.

The biggest problem is that The End of Oak Street is never quite sure whether it wants to be an Amblin film or an arch commentary on their conventions and shortcomings. As for the unearned Big Emotional Moments, they aren’t really the cast’s fault, but the actors do little to remediate the problems of the script. A woefully miscast McGregor, sporting yet another highly implausible American accent, does little more than prove that he is no Craig T. Nelson, the n’est plus ultra of Eighties cinematic dads. Indeed, both parents are insufferable in their own way, a reminder  of how much Amblin films relied on the parents and how effortlessly the great “mom and dad” actors of the era did so much as supporting characters. 

At least when Abrams did his own cut-and-copy attempt with Super 8, it played to his strengths as a journeyman filmmaker with a strong visual eye. What’s disappointing here is how soulless and unemotional Mitchell’s film is, and lacking in any real visual panache. At his best (It Follows) and even his worst (the infuriatingly self-indulgent Under the Silver Lake), Mitchell could never previously be accused of being boring. Somehow here he achieves the impossible. No, not believing that humans and dinosaurs could co-exist. Making me wish that Abrams had directed the film instead.

The End of Oak Street

2026, PG-13, 100 mins. Directed by David Robert Mitchell. Starring Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella, Christian Convery.

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

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