The End of Oak Street

Last night I went to see The End of Oak Street with my nephew.  We have both been anticipating this all summer and we really enjoyed it.  Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway) and her husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) are at odds with each other and with their dull suburban life.  Their children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), who have problems of their own, have begun to notice the strain between them.  One night there is a strange atmospheric anomaly that produces an unusually bright light and causes a power outage.  When the power is still off in the morning, they go out to investigate and discover that their entire neighborhood has been transported back in time by a wormhole to the Jurassic period and that dinosaurs are roaming the streets.  They barely escape from the ensuing carnage and barricade their house in order to stay safe.  However, Brian sneaks out when he sees his dog Starbuck and soon Audrey and then Denise and Greg go out to look for him.  They soon realize that they must work together if they are going to survive.  This is a campy homage to the 1980s action adventure movies that Steven Spielberg used to make and if you can view it through that lens you will definitely have a good time with it.  The dialogue is sometimes a bit clunky and the ending features some major plot holes (I suggest that you don't think too much about the time paradox) but it hardly matters.  I loved the nostalgia and the 1980s aesthetic used throughout, especially a needle drop that had me singing out loud, but my nephew thinks that the filmmakers should have replicated the characteristics of the 35mm film stock from that era.  I also loved the poignant family dynamic in which the terror brings the estranged members closer together (Hathaway and McGregor are excellent).  Finally, I especially loved the truly frightening (and at one point amusing) action sequences involving the dinosaurs.  Showing the impact of the dinosaurs before actually showing them is very effective at building tension and seeing them wreak havoc in a suburban environment is very unsettling.  This is a really fun summer blockbuster and I recommend that you suspend your disbelief and just go with it (particularly if you are Gen X and grew up with Steven Spielberg movies).