Dinosaurs are not intellectual property, no matter what the folks over at Universal Studios will try and tell you. Despite having appeared via stop motion animation since nearly the dawn of cinema, it wasn’t until the 1993 release of Jurassic Park that the scaly beasts were rendered with anything resembling believability, and it’s been that franchise’s cross to bear ever since. That’s more joy than burden, mind you, at least for the financiers; director Steven Spielberg’s original has spawned six sequels, and the seven flicks have collectively raked in nearly 7 billion dollars in global ticket sales. Usually, when a topic or subgenre becomes as wildly popular as dinos have been for over three decades, rival executives start greenlighting projects in hopes of riding coattails, be they knock-off superhero flicks, YA novel adaptations, or variations on the Die Hard template. Somehow, the Jurassic saga has gone largely unchallenged, a pseudo-monopoly that’s led to some truly lazy output, which reached its nadir with 2022’s Jurassic World Dominion. Last year’s Rebirth was a modest step in the right direction, but if there’s only one prehistoric show in town, shouldn’t we expect their output to be more than just passable?

Writer/director David Robert Mitchell obviously thinks so, and his latest feature, The End of Oak Street, has some ideas on how to get us there. They involve time travel, but that journey is initially on the smaller end of the scale, taking audiences back to a Detroit suburb in the 1980s. It’s there we meet the Platt family, a nuclear unit comprised of simmering mother Denise (Anne Hathaway), flailing father Greg (Ewan McGregor), brainiac daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) and timid son Brian (Christian Convery). They’re in soft-spoken crisis mode when we make their acquaintance, but it’s nothing compared to the trauma that awaits when their whole neighborhood is suddenly transported back to the Mesozoic era. It’s a curious predicament, but questions as to how this all came to pass will have to wait for later. From the moment some raptors start digging up nearby yards, we’re in for a non-stop sprint toward survival.

Herein lies the joy of high concept film scenarios that most filmmakers fail to see: When your premise is this involved and outlandish, the need for intricate plotting goes out the window. All that we really require is character set-up, which Mitchell wisely plows through in the first fifteen minutes, quickly establishing the players in his tale through writing that’s knowingly broad. None are particularly well-drawn, but more dimensionality would get in the way of aerodynamics, which are prioritized here at every level. Most of Oak Street unfurls as one giant chase sequence, and Mitchell, who’s best known for 2014’s horror cult classic It Follows, is an ace at getting your blood pumping. He’s also got quite the nasty streak, and those accustomed to the strange morality of Jurassic’s towering carnivores will have to adjust quickly. A Tyrannosaurus knows only hunger, which means that everyone here is on the tasting menu.

Not that things get too grisly, a product of the film’s PG-13 rating, but also of its willful placement in the Amblin lineage. There’s no real reason for the movie’s 1980s setting other than getting you in the headspace of The Goonies, Gremlins, and Poltergeist, a series of films pitched to younger audiences as a gateway to more adult-oriented affairs. Those annoyed by Stranger Things’ utilization of the same tactics will be similarly bothered here, but pastiche can be a lovely flavor when properly calibrated. From the dialogue to the wardrobes to every choice on the soundtrack, Oak Street takes after one of its setting’s most famous dishes, the Detroit-style pizza. High on empty calories, extremely cheese, and positively delicious.

Glutinous nostalgia of this variety runs the risk of toppling over into a puddle of insincerity, but Hathaway is here to adjust the dials. Her all-timer summer, which has already seen her appear in a successful legacy sequel (The Devil Wears Prada 2), a critically-celebrated indie (Mother Mary), and an inevitable Best Picture nominee (The Odyssey), can now add an excellent popcorn entertainment to its resume, and it’s largely thanks to her efforts. Yes, she provides weight to the more maudlin moments, but it’s those wide, expressive eyes and a yawning maw of a mouth that truly stick out. Her performance is reminiscent of Emma Stone’s work in 2010’s Easy A, wherein the actor proved that the entire Romantic Comedy industry could be hers if she didn’t have bigger, more dramatic fish to fry. We’re better off for Hathaway refusing an obvious path toward the scream queen hall of fame, but it’s a pleasure to see that alternate reality come to life so vividly. Judging McGregor, Stella, and Convery against a thespian who’s on such a heater would be simply unkind, so we’ll go ahead and skip right past them.

After all, a little omission never hurt anyone, at least not within Oak Street’s shockingly brief 99 minute runtime. It’s not that Mitchell and company don’t provide an explanation for the time jump, but rather that they don’t seem all that interested in making sure the bolts are flush. They’re here to chomp and get mean with it, not show their homework, avoiding the pitfalls of the extended Jurassic serial in the process. After conventional wisdom had led each and every live-action dinosaur movie to stretch out over two-and-a-half hours and cost north of 200 million bucks to produce, Mitchell’s snack-sized approach hits like a blast of fresh air. The monsters may not look quite as good, but the action staging makes that distinction moot, as does the scarcity. It’s clear that our appetite for ancient leviathans with long claws and sharp teeth isn’t being met by the marketplace, and in these trying times, a counterfeit of the original is better than nothing. In fact, it’s better straight-up.