The End of Oak Street (M) – 100 minutes

A most entertaining dinosaur movie, unlike any dinosaur movie you have seen before, The End of Oak Street is, in a word, surprising.

It is 1982 and the Platt family live on a pleasant street in Flowerdale, Michigan, where it is not unusual for neighbours to come together and have fun.

Aspiring novelist Denise (Anne Hathaway) is not in a good place mentally.

She is contemplating divorcing her husband, Greg (Ewan McGregor), who doesn’t open up to her.

She can’t understand why he feels the need to earn “extra” money by leaving the family and delivering pizzas, which is what he is doing.

But unbeknown to her, he has just lost his job and is keeping that from her because he doesn’t want her to worry.

The pair has two children. 

Audrey (Maisy Stella) is the elder. Having just finished school, she would dearly like to study at Cornell University under renowned astronomer Carl Sagan.

Thirteen-year-old Brian (Christian Convery) is particular fond of the family dog, Starbuck. The pair is inseparable.

And then a very strange thing happens. Mysterious sounds and bright white lights descend on the neighbourhood.

It doesn’t take long to realise that something is wrong – very wrong.

The sounds turn out to be those emanating from dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes.

Through some phantasmagorical shift, everyone within a two-mile radius has travelled back in time to the prehistoric age.

It is like all have fallen down a sink hole.

The dinosaurs are marauding, uprooting and destroying everything in sight.

Now it is a question of the Platts banding together and doing everything in their power to survive this apocalypse.

And I am here to tell you that won’t be easy, because there appears to be no way out. 

Since he was a kid, writer and director David Robert Mitchell had wanted to make a dinosaur movie.

His father was obsessed by the creatures (in fact, he dreamt of being a palaeontologist).

Then a few years ago, David Mitchell was walking through his middle-class neighbourhood and passed an interesting house and alleyway.

For some reason, he imagined a dinosaur there, digging through the trash.

From there sprung the idea of wanting to make a film that felt like the image in his mind 

Hence The End of Oak Street was born.

It is one wild film. I mean wild in a good way.

Family values. Heaps of creatures. Time travel. Reflections of not only the Dinosaur age, but the 1980s and a gentler time.

Aurally and visually, it is most alluring. The filmmakers have combining strong visual effects with atmospherics and nostalgia … and this unlikely combination works. 

It is dangerous, adventurous, dramatic … and fun, proving to be a heady combination.

I really enjoyed the performances too.

Anne Hathaway, surely one of the busiest actors going around, breathes credibility into a disenchanted Denise.

Ewan McGregor is laid back as a caring father.

They, plus the actors playing the children and others cast in bit parts, bring a homely feel to the material.

There is a lot to commend The End of Oak Street, which is an engaging, if far-fetched, and pleasurable watch.

So, suspend believe and allow the film to weave its little slice of magic.

Rated M, it scores a 7½ out of 10.