The End of Oak Street

Rated PG-13 • Theaters

The Platt family—­parents Greg and Denise (Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway) and children Audrey and Brian (Maisy Stella and Christian Convery)—might live on an idyllic suburban street, but their lives are unraveling. Greg’s been drinking. Denise feels trapped in her domesticity. Audrey wishes she could afford college. Brian flirts with delinquency. But these mundane problems don’t seem so big when the Platts find themselves trapped in a prehistoric jungle after a cosmic ripple relocates their subdivision to the age of the dinosaurs.

The End of Oak Street is the kind of movie that relies on vibes. It’s set in 1982, allowing it to tap into nostalgia for those kids on bikes in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Then after the ripple it capitalizes on that dinosaurs-chasing-humans energy from Jurassic Park (this time the dinos have feathers). And at only 99 minutes, the film is fast-paced and suspenseful with a couple of plot twists that almost make up for the film’s drawbacks. Almost, but not quite.

The silliest thing about this silly movie is the behavior of both the humans and dinosaurs. Despite the neighborhood being a close-knit community before the ripple, the humans don’t band together for support. Greg and Denise don’t have a single conversation with a neighbor after the dinos show up. And the dinosaurs act more like relentless flesh-eating zombies than wild animals.

The movie pushes the boundary of its PG-13 rating with its gruesome body count—you really have to love watching dinos eat people to enjoy this film—and it engages in some banal philosophizing about whether God exists. The consensus seems to be no. There’s also a subtle queer storyline involving Audrey’s character that feels like a sop to current sensibilities.