The End of Oak Street review: Whacked out dinosaur movie is a surprisingly unhinged, fun ride

The End of Oak Street has one of the more outlandish premises for a movie that features serious stars such as Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor.

A nuclear family from 1982 wakes up one morning to discover their entire neighbourhood has been transported into the prehistoric past. It’s death by dinosaurs, and you’re literally trapped in suburbia.

It sounds silly, and the trailer looked silly, and it is silly, but that is its surprising strength. It is this excellent balance between hold-your-breath thrills, and laugh-out-loud goofiness.

This is a movie that knows what it is, and what it is, is Hathaway in full mum mode, firing a shotgun at a dinosaur while running in sandals. It’s glorious, and you all need to see it.

Preferably with a crowd of people because that audience will work itself into a frenzy with whoops, claps of triumph and collective exasperated cries of “oh, no, not again!”. That’s half the joy.

That’s not a dig, it absolutely feels like the filmmakers, including writer and director David Robert Mitchell, designed it to be one of those bizarre adventures that deliberately yanks you about so you’re clutching your friend’s arm one minute and laughing uproariously the next.

This movie is so fun. It’s stupid fun, not in a Naked Gun spoofy way, although it’s certainly not above a great visual gag, like two dinosaurs getting it on to break the tension of the main characters’ white-knuckle flee-for-your-life situation.

It’s how it transitions from that suspense to release that works so well, and, in a cinema, you can feel the energy change through the crowd as everyone shifts to the mindset of going along with whatever this wacky movie throws at them.

The central family in The End of Oak Street is the Platts – mum Denise (Hathaway), dad Greg (McGregor), teen daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella), son Brian (Christian Convery) and blue cattle dog Starbuck (perhaps they were a fan of the original Battlestar Galactica series?).

There’s some tension in the air with Denise and Greg clearly disagreeing over something they don’t want the kids to know about, but of course the children have noticed. Greg is delivering pizzas to get by, and he feels as if he has let his family down.

The stronger-willed and, arguably, more capable Denise has aspirations to be a writer, and the book she drafted with a female protagonist who walks out on her family, might hint at some of her frustrations.

So there is an emotional undercurrent running through the film of where these characters are in their lives, which will manifest in how they react when faced with freakin’ dinosaurs trying to eat them, the heroic moments and parenting instincts that emerge.

The film does a decent job of setting it up the stakes through its portrayal of the banality and texture of suburban life in the 1980s, complete with kids on bikes, and this one “typical” family, so when the big event happens and the dinosaurs appear, you are invested.

So you really do feel that jeopardy of being stuck in this zone with no means of escape, and you end up cheering every amateur attempt at mounting a defence with kitchen knives and bow-and-arrow.

This is Hathaway’s movie, her Denise is fierce without emulating your typical female action hero of that era. She’s not Ridley or Sarah Connors, but she holds her own in her own way and it’s a bloody delight to watch.

If you weren’t expecting much from The End of Oak Street, who could blame you. On paper, it sounded ludicrous. In reality, it’s a marvellous time.

Rating: 3.5/5

The End of Oak Street is in cinemas