UPDATE 8/15: The 85 percent did not carry over to the box office. Oak Street is tracking to a $20 million opening with a B CinemaScore and a 77 percent audience score, and here is why the reviews did not translate. Original article follows.
The End of Oak Street is getting the one thing it needed heading into opening weekend: strong reviews.
The Bad Robot dinosaur movie debuted at 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes Wednesday, with 55 reviews counted at publishing time and more still coming in.
When we covered the $20 million to $25 million opening projection, reviews were still the big unknown. Now they’re in, and that 85 percent could give the movie exactly the kind of boost it needs.
It Beat Every Jurassic Sequel On Rotten Tomatoes
Here’s the number Warner Bros. will gladly take: 85 percent is higher than every Jurassic sequel ever made and trails only Steven Spielberg’s 1993 original.
Jurassic World topped out at 72 percent. Jurassic World Rebirth came in at 50 percent last summer, while Dominion sits at the bottom of the franchise with 28 percent.
And critics are making the comparison themselves.
Screen Rant’s Molly Freeman wrote, “Not since Jurassic Park has a dinosaur movie been this wildly fun.”
The Cinematic Reel called it “everything Jurassic World: Dominion wished it could be,” while Polygon said the movie “makes up for a summer without an actual Jurassic World sequel.”
For an original dinosaur movie trying to compete with a $6 billion franchise, that’s about as good a review narrative as Warner Bros. could ask for.
Critics Are Buying Anne Hathaway Vs. Dinosaurs
The reviews also line up with what the tracking has been showing.
Deadline flagged Hathaway as a strong first choice among women, and critics seem to be responding to exactly what the trailers have been selling.
Vulture pointed to the movie as proof the studios should still be making original spectacles, ideally “ones in which Anne Hathaway fires a rifle at a velociraptor.”
RogerEbert.com gave the movie the full four stars, praising the way it grounds the dinosaur chaos in real family drama, while the Seattle Times credited David Robert Mitchell with turning the comfort of the suburban cul-de-sac against the audience.
Rolling Stone summed up the reaction nicely: “You’re just stoked they were able to make something like this at all.” IndieWire graded it an A minus and called it “what multiplexes have been missing from recent summers.”
Not Every Critic Bought The Spielberg Throwback
There are some holdouts.
The Guardian’s two-star review argued “the element of jeopardy is missing,” while the harshest take came from AwardsWatch, which dismissed the movie as a secondhand mix of E.T. and Jurassic Park.
Even some positive reviews, including The Hollywood Reporter’s, liked the movie while questioning whether it ever becomes much more than a love letter to Spielberg.
But at 85 percent, those reviews are clearly in the minority.
Now The Box Office Has A Chance To Grow
This is the piece the box office projection was missing.
The $20 million to $25 million opening was never going to tell the full story. With an $80 million budget and its premium screens split with Spider-Man and The Odyssey, Oak Street needs to stick around after opening weekend.
That means word of mouth matters a lot more here than it does for a front-loaded franchise movie, and an 85 percent Rotten Tomatoes score gives the movie a strong start before audiences even weigh in.
It also changes the August breakout race.
Oak Street climbed all summer to become a contender while frontrunner Insidious: Out of the Further has been drifting. A horror sequel can survive weaker reviews. An original movie benefits a lot more when critics come out this strong.
The next test is the audience. Previews start Thursday at 1 p.m., and CinemaScore arrives Friday night.
For Bad Robot, the timing matters too. The company is shrinking as its Warner Bros. deal runs out, and Oak Street has become something of a referendum on whether the partnership was worth it.
Whatever happens at the box office, the was-it-worth-it debate now has one thing it didn’t have before: a movie critics actually like.
Warner Bros. spent all summer trying to get people interested. The reviews just gave that campaign a very nice push heading into Thursday previews.
The End of Oak Street opens in theaters Friday, August 14, starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor, with J.J. Abrams producing. For the full summer picture, see our summer box office tracking roundup.
