A family of four must deal with marital struggles, teen angst, cranky neighbors and, oh yeah, dinosaurs. Meanwhile, viewers of The End of Oak Street must navigate oodles of violence and peril, some foul language and sexual content and some weird slights directed at faith.
There goes the neighborhood.
No, really. There it goes. Something picks up a sizable chunk of suburbia, circa 1982, and plops it right in the middle of the Mesozoic Era.
It’s not all bad. The hot, steamy conditions do wonders for the pores. Long commutes and rush hour traffic are things of the past. The conditions provide all sorts of opportunities for exercise.
And let’s be honest: The Platt family could use a fresh start.
Even before their world was torn asunder, Greg and Denise Platt had been struggling. They bickered relentlessly. Greg found an escape of sorts by drinking on the sly and working constantly—even taking a job as a pizza delivery guy to make a few extra bucks. Denise poured out her frustrations into writing a secret novel, one in which the main character is a frustrated wife and mother who longs to run away.
Their two kids, Audrey and Brian, could feel the tension and dealt with it in their own desperate ways. Audrey read on the rooftop and dreamed of going to a college that she couldn’t afford. Brian was becoming a full-blown troublemaker whose best friend was his dog, Starbuck.
But the presence of dinosaurs has a way of altering family dynamics. The neighborhood centered around Oak Street has become an unexpected buffet for the prehistoric beasties: Nothing like chasing a bunch of screaming humans to work up an appetite, they think. (Or they would, if their brains weren’t so small.)
Maybe life in the Mesozoic isn’t all bad, but the Platts would still love to get back home. But to even have a chance of returning to their own time, they’ll need to survive all the predators chowing down on the neighbors. And to survive, they’ll need to work together.
I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that the Platts do eventually work together. It takes some time, but the family draws closer as outside forces do their best to tear them apart. (Literally.)
Oh, Greg and Denise still argue. Some family secrets spill, and those secrets take some time to sift. But Greg and Denise do whatever they can to protect their children. And in the process of trying to protect them, husband and wife draw ever closer to one another, too. When the film opens, you get the feeling that Denise would do almost anything to escape her hubby. By the time it ends, life without him seems unimaginable.
All the family members risk their lives to save others—including the lives of some of their neighbors. Audrey and Brian rescue a fellow teen named Jeannette, and, when they learn that Jeannette lost her parents to dinosaurs, they sweep her into the family fold. Denise finds a creative way to save some of her own friends as well. And at least one neighbor sacrifices everything to help the Platts on their journey. Starbuck, the family dog, comes in clutch as well, exhibiting a massive amount of canine courage to save someone.
After learning of their predicament, Greg tells his family that they’ll be OK: God will protect them, he says. Denise rolls her eyes at that, reminding Greg that they only go to church on Christmas.
For Audrey, even that holiday attendance feels a little much. She tells Jeannette, who attended a Catholic school, that she doesn’t believe in God. “Sometimes I don’t either,” Jeannette admits. Meanwhile, Brian, largely ignored by both girls, announces that he does believe in God—seemingly hoping to curry favor with Jeannette.
Brian tries to make conversation with Jeannette, asking her what Catholic school is like and marveling that prayer is allowed there. Jeannette counters that “you can pray wherever you want. Nobody has to know.”
We hear that a mysterious plant that sprouted in someone’s backyard resembles something that went extinct about 200 million years ago. (When the neighborhood is transported into the past, the movie suggests that sort of extreme time transfer.)
Brian clearly has a crush on Jeannette. But the movie strongly suggests that Jeannette and Audrey have eyes for each other. They share a telling glance as they talk about their doubts in God. We sometimes see the two girls hold hands. And when Jeannette goes missing, Audrey’s almost obsessed with finding her again. Nothing about the girls’ interactions with each other is sexual and could easily be waved away, but it’s pretty clear that The End of Oak Street would like you to think of them as a romantic couple.
Two massive dinosaurs have sex in front of the movie’s camera. Denise and Greg stumble across this coupling; Denise giggles at the sight and insists on taking a picture of the prehistoric pair with her Polaroid camera.
Brian looks at what apparently is a Playboy magazine. The only page we see, though, is fairly modest: a woman dressed in either a white bikini or underwear. Greg and Denise kiss each other a few times, and in one of the movie’s sweeter moments, they hold each other close during a moment of peril. Denise wears clothing that can expose quite a bit of cleavage and leg.
The End of Oak Street is PG-13. But at times, the movie’s violent content feels like it pushes at the higher end of the rating’s boundary.
Humans definitely bear the brunt of the onslaught. Several people are chomped and killed (in that order), and one man has his leg ripped off. A character battles flying Pteranodons on the roof of his house, but the creatures eventually tear him apart. (The creatures’ own bodies block the view of the carnage.) A dinosaur bites on someone’s head, and several corpses lay in the neighborhood’s streets and yards—sometimes being actively eaten by their killers. (These meals are often hidden by furniture or garbage cans, though we do see one flying dinosaur prepare to dig in, daintily lifting the dead man’s shirt to attack his back.
Characters crouch in a car as a dino stampede races through the neighborhood—many crunching the car as they run over it. (The vehicle is badly damaged, and the characters share it with the bloodied body of a neighbor previously killed.) Another character is almost smashed by a car being pushed by an Allosaurus. Denise discovers the body of a neighbor in her kitchen, still clutching a shotgun, and notes bloody footprints leading outside. A vehicle blows up, leading to a much broader fire.
Dinosaurs suffer their own series of wounds, too. A massive snake is shot with an arrow and stabbed several times. Dinosaurs are shot with handguns and shotguns: Sometimes the bullets disable or slow them down, but the bigger dinos barely seem to feel the shots. A fearsome dinosaur gets hit in both the ankle and the face with a sledgehammer, temporarily stunning the beast. Dinosaurs are warded off by poles, sticks and gun barrels.
There’s a bit of human-on-human violence, as well. A teen boy repeatedly punches another guy in the face, knocking him almost unconscious. (Someone tells the victim that his bloodied face looks like pepperoni pizza.) We hear that before the dinosaurs came, Brian threw something into the spokes of another boy’s bike, sending the bike flying and breaking the kid’s arm.
Bloody cuts are tended to. Blood stains streets, sidewalks, floors and roofs. Someone takes a tumble off a rooftop, and a dog falls from about 15 feet up. A cat sounds like it becomes a quick off-camera meal for a dinosaur. Before the dinosaurs come, a neighbor threatens to shoot Starbuck, and Denise threatens to burn the neighbor’s house down if he ever threatens to do so again.
We hear some strong profanity, including one or two uses of the f-word and nearly a dozen of the s-word. Characters also say “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is misused about five times.
Greg secretly takes a swig of whiskey from a bottle he’s hiding in the home. He tells son Brian to lay off the cigarettes: When Brian insists he’s not smoking, Greg tells him that he can smell the smoke on him.
Before the big switch, a wormhole engages in a bit of warmup activity. In one case, a neighbor finds a 200-pound pile of excrement in his backyard, and he assumes that the Platts are guilty. (We later see plenty of other piles of the stuff, and we watch as one dinosaur does his business.)
Greg and Denise both lie to each other. Audrey recalls a time when Brian, as a younger child, defecated in the bathtub. We hear references to the testicles on one of Starbuck’s chew toys.
Dinosaurs are cool. Ask any 5-year-old boy, and he’ll tell you as much. Dinosaurs don’t take guff. They go where they want, eat what they want, knock down what they want. And no one ever makes them clean their rooms or eat their broccoli.
And therein lies the central charm of The End of Oak Street.
Oh, we’ve seen dinosaurs aplenty on screen before. From the original King Kong to the Jurassic Park movies, they’ve been popular attractions at the multiplex. But the dinos we see here? Well, they’re different: We see some dinosaurs that we’ve never seen on screen before. And the ones we have? Well, let’s just say they feature an updated look. Never mind that the dinosaurs we see come from different prehistoric periods and that some likely never existed at all (I’m looking at you, you terrifying giant white snake), they’re still pretty cool to see.
But those creatures don’t overwhelm the humans we see here—or the humanity they exhibit.
This is a story about dinosaurs, yes, but it’s also one about family. The messages we see here feel heartfelt and sincere. The movie lauds the beauty of marriage, even in the midst of difficulty. And it gives us a family that grows stronger under pressure. And that’s something.
Unfortunately, the content issues are something else entirely. The film pushes its PG-13 bounds, both in terms of violence and language. Unwarranted and unneeded sexual content, including some winks to LGBT relationships, will cause some parents to roll their eyes—or shield those of their children. And the film makes time to throw some elbows at faith, especially Christianity, too. And that’s a shame.
The End of Oak Street is a strange, silly and entertaining romp that suffers from the piles of problems it drops in its cinematic backyard. Its makers, like its starring dinos, lacked restraint, and that causes needless damage to this film.
Dinosaurs have a great excuse for their glorious rampages: They have brains the size of walnuts. But we humans? We know better. Or at least we should.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
