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The End of ‘The End of Oak Street’ Sure Felt Like THAT Right?
One of the year's most original and surprising movies, The End of Oak Street , is now in theaters. It stars Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway as a couple whose entire neighborhood is mysteriously whisked back in time to a prehistoric era, forcing them to fight dinosaurs. It's a wild idea, one you kind of have to see to believe. And as fun and fresh as the film is for the most part, the ending is not exactly that. In fact, it shares some very, very specific points with something very recognizable, and there's no way it's a coincidence. Either way, it's worth discussing.
Don't read further unless you want to be completely spoiled on The End of Oak Street.
So let's do a quick recap. Stuck millions of years in the past, Denise (Hathaway) leads her kids, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery), as well as their neighbor Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis) through a portal, which brings them back home to 1982. They arrive a little outside their neighborhood, about 20 minutes before the moment everyone was blipped back. The neighborhood is still there, but not for long.
Jeannette runs away to warn her family, but Denise and the kids don't need to be warned. They're right here. Earlier, though, they lost their dad, Greg (McGregor), in a brutal dinosaur killing, so Denise has an idea. She runs to the phone and makes a phone call. Who you gonna call? How could she possibly get Greg to come and visit them on a random street on the outskirts of town? She orders a pizza from the place he delivers from, of course, which ensures Greg is not in the neighborhood when it goes missing. The family is reunited as the neighborhood blips away.
From there, we jump ahead two years and learn that Denise made other phone calls that night too. Calls to a bunch of family and friends who were originally killed by dinosaurs. The calls saved them, everyone loves her, and the notoriety allows her to live out her dream and become a successful writer. She writes a book called "The End of Oak Street" about their experiences.
Then, in the film's final scenes, we see that everyone in the family basically got what they wanted. Denise became a successful author. Greg helped move them into a bigger, nicer house. Brian has a girlfriend. Audrey is dating Jeannette, and there's even a second Jeannette, because the one from the past saved herself and her family. (Which means the other Denise, Audrey, and Brian were sent back to the past to die along with everyone else, which is really messed up, but let's try not to think about that.)
That's the recap. So what's the point? Think about it again. Denise and the family travelled back to the future (hint hint) and arrived a few minutes earlier than they originally left. They then used that time to slightly change things in their favor, and as a result, the family becomes more successful than they previously were, in large part due to a parent writing sci-fi novels. Do we get it yet? That's freaking Back to the Future people! The only thing it's missing is Doc Brown coming back and taking them on another adventure. "Bones. Where we're going, they don't need…bones," he could've said. We digress.
Clearly, writer-director David Robert Mitchell ( It Follows ) is making a very specific and intentional homage. And honestly, we're not mad at it. It's satisfying. It's kind of funny, and it adds some flavor. But after a movie built on this very simple, unique, original idea, to borrow so liberally from such a well-known time travel movie is still a pretty weird decision. Do you agree? Let us know below.
The End of Oak Street is now in theaters.
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