WHERE GOES THE NEIGHBOURHOOD

 

MOVIE
The End of Oak Street
Director JJ Abrams
Review Ray Chan

 

The End of Oak Street has a simple enough premise. A typical American neighbourhood somehow gets sucked up into a wormhole and transplanted into a prehistoric era of flora and fauna.
    Never mind the hows or whys. The movie centres around how the residents cope with the sudden unexplained prevalence of raptors, lizards, eels and flying reptiles menacing their once-homely streets.
    And simple as that plot gets, this scenario succeeds in ensnaring the viewers from the get-go, with director JJ Abrams focused on simply telling an entertaining story.
    There’s no complex plotline to mull over, and it does not constantly lean on the emotional heaviness that has become something of a prestige-film pre-requisite. Did someone mention Oppenheimer? There’s something almost indecently relaxing about sitting in a cinema without having to ponder moral implications of nuclear physics.
    Nor does it subscribe to the modern adventure-picture tradition in which the fate of humanity apparently depends upon how convincingly a city can be demolished. Oak Street understands that spectacle does not necessarily have to mean wanton urban destruction, and that a film can generate excitement without turning another fictional downtown into a cloud of dust.
    Instead, it finds much of its appeal in the sheer oddness of its world. The diverse array of dinosaurs are particularly interesting, and cover a gamut of Mesozoic members, many of which probably never existed together in the same geological periods. Armoured ankylosauruses waddle down the streets next to long-necked feathered sauropods, pterosaurs and pterodactyls battle for aerial supremacy, and cretazoic crocodiles take over the waterways and swimming pools, with one aquatic animal, a Titanoboa, featuring in several standout scenes.

    

    In this regard, it’s a veritable menagerie of monsters, making the offering more of a visual spectacle than, say, Jurassic Park, oft restricted to just a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the same old groups of predators.
    Central to events is the Platt household, strangely the only group of locals with enough gumption and grit to brave the predicament and try to avoid being eaten. Mum Denise (Anne Hathaway) leads the way with courage and conviction, while husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) complements the chemistry well. Depicted as a couple on the verge of separating, it is  evident that that this husband and wife really care for each other: an ever-present trait that comes to a predictable conclusion by the saga’s conclusion.
    The kids, Christian Convery and Maisy Stella — pleasingly, depicted as intelligent and well-mannered teenagers —  work perfectly with the older actors, possessing the intangible quality that was present in the performances of children who formed a part of so many releases by Abrams’ idol and mentor, Steven Spielberg.
    Indeed, emulating the work of his childhood heroes seems to be Abrams’ forte: he did it with George Lucas in The Rise of Skywalker, and then with Spielberg again in Super 8.
    For Oak Street, it’s clear that both Abrams and writer David Robert Mitchell wanted to tap into the magic of the Spielberg feel-good formulae of old, while adorning it with the far-improved visual effects available to current moviemakers. The result is a genuine and heartwarming story of the importance of family, anchoring the narrative even as the surrounding events grow increasingly chaotic.
    And really that’s all that counts. In the end, all you want to do is just watch the dinosaurs, root for the protagonists, and see how they can survive such a mess.

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