The End of Oak Street

I am apparently in the minority, but I did not like this one.

The premise seems to be 'Vintage Amblin but for adults' taking the plot and premise of a classic Spielberg story (Jurassic Park meets ET) but shifts from the POV characters from the kids to the adults. Unfortunately, the film misses the Adult Amblin mark in three very glaring ways:

1. There is a distinct moment for the Spielberg reaction, and the director misses it. Spielberg famously shows people reacting to a thing before showing the audience the thing. Think the jeep scene in Jurassic Park. This film does the reverse - it shows the end of Oak Street being placed in the Cretaceous (maybe?), then it shows people reacting, and then it cuts back to the money shot.

2. The dinosaurs here are unmotivated. They don't feel like living creatures, they're killing machines divorced from the biological motivation to kill. This is dinosaur as slasher villain.

3. The film robs the father of his ability to learn. At the start of the film McGregor's Greg is ostensibly a poor father and objectively a bad husband. He's not cheating, but he is hiding things from his wife (who at one point makes the true observation that she can handle anything he can). He has something of an arc but the Greg at the end of the film is literally the Greg from the start. Everyone else grew, but Greg was spared the need while getting the benefit.

That last one really soured me.