To the Sunny Colch Odeon! …on Monday afternoon for the cheap as chips grubby fiver deal. Sitting in my Odeon app and selected less than an hour earlier, was an online ticket for The End of Oak Street.
The trailer has half captured my interest in recent weeks. I confess to not recognising Ewan McGregor in the leading father role during the promo clips.
The trouble with the Odeon cheap as chips grubby fiver deal is that during the school holidays there’s not a lot of choice to choose from. We’re talking crappy kid’s cartoon flicks here. At the end of Oak Street was my only realistic option.
I viewed the trailer once again before making the decision to buy the grubby fiver ticket. Hmmm, that looks alright. Not great, but alright. I read the Guardian review. It got slated. Hey hoe.
No worries I quite enjoy the idea of watching films on the big screen for a fiver that I would otherwise in no way get to see, or at least if I did view them at home they would hold at best 20% of my attention.
The basic plot for At the End of Oak Street is a slightly dysfunctional American family in the Michigan area in the early 1980s. Something wicked this way comes and all of a sudden their neighbourhood is transported into a not very friendly dinosaur park.
I think you’ve seen this one before. The appeal of the early Jurassic Park films was that there was nothing like this previously. You were genuinely in awe seeing the big beasts interacting with humans.
At the end of Oak Street could have quite easily slotted into the Jurassic franchise. The dinos look pretty much the same. There’s also the same US-style goofy humour taking place.
It’s not a bad film, it just tails out rather rapidly. In fact the first 20 minutes or so are really rather enjoyable. There’s a definite innocence in being transported back to the early 80s and seeing the very dullness and routine of family life in a pre-digital age.
As soon as the first dinosaurs appear, it descends downhill very fast and becomes absolutely ridiculous.
The basic play is that classic Jaws moment where everything is quiet then all of a sudden BOOM! GOTCHA! The only trouble is that you can take so many gotcha moments before you are desensitised to them.
It all got very silly when some classic hardcore dinos sex was displayed. A selfie on a polaroid was then taken by the two main characters, natch. That’s something you most defo wouldn’t have seen in any of the Jurassic films. The shark had been jumped, not to mention the two mating dinosaurs who were jumping each other.
The final 10 minutes also just about manages to draw together the threads from the opening scenes. It starts as it ends with an OK-ish film but nothing outstanding. What follows in between is one great big steaming dinosaur shit sandwich.