The End of Oak Street puts Mike in mind of the sort of disposable but likeable films he watched on video as a child, although they didn’t tend to cost $85 million to make. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell conspicuously apes Steven Spielberg with a family, a suburb, a dinosaur invasion, a large pile of poo and a lot of 1980s nostalgia. We debate whether the film’s derivativeness, charmless performances, ropey CGI and poor plotting are outweighed by its genuinely effective set-pieces and its success as uncomplicated monster-movie fun. The End of Oak Street is far from good but if you watch it on VHS when you’re eight years old, just as Mike did with The Pagemaster and 3 Ninjas, it’ll probably stay with you forever.
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With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.
