Quaint ‘Oak Street’ is woefully short on excitement
I’d be hard-pressed to name the best flick of this summer, but I can’t instantly cite the dumbest. That would be the dinosaur of dinosaur movies, “The End of Oak Street.”
Why do I not pine for “Oak”? The reasons are many, from the awful casting to the cheesy, obviously fake-looking dinosaurs chewing up a Detroit suburb, circa 1982. That was the summer of “E.T.,” a film and a filmmaker in Steven Spielberg that a worshipful David Robert Mitchell seeks, and fails, to emulate with his “Jurassic Park” ripoff.
Not long ago, Mitchell made passable sci-fi flicks like “It Follows.” But “The End of Oak Street” is merely flat-out cribbing off Spielberg’s homework. If that weren’t bad enough, Mitchell does it with some of the worst head-scratching science since Trump suggested injecting bleach to fight COVID. Does he expect us to just accept that it’s possible for an entire neighborhood to be transported through time? It laughs in the face of basic physics.
It’s almost as senseless as casting Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor as bickering, blue-collar, Midwestern parents with two teenage offspring and no discernible income after Dad was laid off at the auto plant. Heck, Hathaway doesn’t even bother to glam down for the role, looking every bit as exquisite here as she did in the “Prada” sequel three months ago. I’d like to know how her Denise Platt is able to always look like a million bucks while her family is so broke, her husband, Greg, is delivering pizzas to keep the lights on. Just asinine!
At least Spielberg, and his Amblin associates, presented us with parents you could relate. It’s all you can do not to root for the wide variety of dinos to devour Mom and Dad toot sweet. But the indigestion it would cause might constitute animal cruelty. Instead, we must watch several of their neighbors get chumped on, while the Platts always seem to get off scot-free. That is until late in the picture, when Mitchell delivers a “Psycho” shocker. But even then, the writer-director chickens out by inserting a smarmy, all-ends-well conclusion that is anything but satiating.
The couple’s two kids, Brian (Christian Convery) and Audrey (Maisy Stella), are even blander than the parents. Although I did enjoy the twist in which Brian’s dream girl (Jordan Alexa Davis) is more interested in his older sister. The siblings, like their parents, always opt for the stupidest thing possible, like never keeping track of their surroundings or bickering over trivial matters. They are super athletic, always managing to outrun the dinos, whose massive overbites repeatedly come up empty whenever the Platts are within chomping distance.
The near misses occur with such regularity that it quickly becomes repetitive. And where’s the urgency on the part of the Platts, who often take a seat outdoors to discuss everything but how to either escape or effectively fight back? Mom, a wannabe novelist, is the only one with a semblance of a brain, using a shotgun to try and fell the beasts. The ammo has almost zero effect, but at least she’s accomplishing more than Brian and his little toy bow and arrow.
The person most responsible for this junk is the film’s chief producer J.J. Abrams, a filmmaker who never saw a Spielberg trick he didn’t want to copy. He proved that to negative effect with his own cheap Spielberg knockoff, “Super 8,” in 2011. In many ways, this film repeats that flick’s glaring mistakes, hoping the second time will be charm. It’s not. Just another Rolex ripoff like you’ll see on the sidewalks of New York. At least the fake watches are decent facsimiles. This looks nothing but chintzy. Something even the dinos are averse to swallow.
Movie review
The End of the Street
Rated: PG-13
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Christian Convery and Maisy Stella
Director: David Robert Mitchell
Writer: David Robert Mitchell
Runtime: 99 minutes
Where: In theaters now
Grade: C-
