Hollywood mixed "Jurassic Park" with "Stranger Things" - and it almost worked
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor lead a summer adventure that mixes "Stranger Things" and "Jurassic Park," with monsters, nostalgia, and action. It's fun as long as you don't think too much - because behind the noise hides a superficial film with a lazy ending.
"End of Oak Street" tries to fill the void, and the pockets, left behind by Steven Spielberg's dinosaur franchise, "Jurassic Park," and the successful Netflix series, "Stranger Things." To do so, it recruits director David Robert Mitchell ("Under the Silver Lake") and two Hollywood stars who have not yet been seen together on screen, creating a kind of hybrid that seeks to provide a nostalgic, kicking, and wild experience that will conquer the audience. Now it remains to be seen if it succeeds or if the end of the street will also be at the end of the summer box office charts.
After a mysterious cosmic event uproots Oak Street from the quiet suburb where it is located and moves the neighborhood to an unknown place, the Platt family, parents Denis (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) and their children, are forced to adapt to the new reality. Soon they discover that their survival depends on their ability to stay together and cooperate.
"End of Oak Street" opens with a neighborhood picnic in a typical American suburb. The sun is shining, the families are smiling a bit too widely, and everything looks like it was pulled out of an advertisement for the American dream. Except that the perfect veneer cracks quickly: the parents don't always get along, the neighbors are annoying, the dog is acting out, and the children fear their parents are about to divorce. From the very first moments, it is clear that the film is not really interested in selling us the suburban fantasy but in having fun dismantling it.
The film is in no hurry to announce in which year the plot takes place, but relies on the viewer to identify it through a collection of references and familiar cultural signs. Like quite a few nostalgic works from recent years, it seems at times that the period itself interests it less than the image that has already been built for it in popular culture. Instead of recreating the 80s, it recreates the way modern cinema and television have taught us to remember them.
That same tendency to lean on familiar signs instead of building something with real depth continues in the design of the family. We have a father who avoids staying at home and talking to his wife, a mother who is not satisfied with her life and escapes into the world of writing and literature, an eldest daughter who serves most of the time as a houseplant, except for her fondness for space and astronomy, and a 13-year-old boy who does stupid things with his friends. Everyone gets a characteristic or two that are supposed to make them characters, but almost none of them get any real depth. The superficiality is also evident in the relationships between them, which struggle to create a sense of connection or real emotional bond.
And the disturbed dog from the opening scene? It appears at times as a real dog and at times as a creature that looks like it was crudely copied from the computer game "The Sims." A miserable dog that, ironically, amidst all the fakeness around it, turns out to be one of the most authentic characters in the Platt family, and perhaps even in the entire film.
After more than an hour in which the film shows more of the same, a marked and shiny plot move appears miraculously that explains all the "why" and "how" of the film. Both the viewer and the characters understand very quickly where everything is converging, and in one jump, literally, the whole problem is solved to leave room for an optimistic and clean closing.
Such a move does not indicate many good things, but it certainly indicates lazy and uninspired writing, which leaves the viewer indifferent and confused when the closing credits roll. The starting point and the ending point of the film connect sloppily, without providing proper answers and while abandoning the characters and the complexity that the film tried to build around them at the beginning. Ultimately, the film puts a bandage on everything in the exact same idyllic and flat spirit that the opening scene sought to undermine.
And yet, these failures do not make the film as a whole a bad viewing experience. It is enjoyable at times and can certainly provide entertainment, as long as you don't take it too seriously. The world-building, the action scenes, the humor that flashes from time to time, and especially the unfortunate and unlucky events that befall the many neighbors following their arrival in an unknown place teeming with predatory animals, provide quite a few successful moments. It is not a film that you suffer from, but the enjoyment it offers remains limited.
"End of Oak Street" can receive a participation medal for its attempt to compete with the other films of the last summer. There is no doubt that the investment, both in casting and in artistic choices, is very noticeable, and sometimes it seems that the film even tries too hard to be liked by the audience. Although it would like to stand in line with iconic works like "Jurassic Park" and "Stranger Things," it will have to settle for another Letterboxd viewing mark that will be quickly forgotten.
