This is one that can be appreciated for its stylistic choices and surrealistic expression, but even if you’re not into that David Lynch-type stuff, at the very least, Escape From Tomorrow is worth seeing because the simple fact that it was able to get made and somehow released commercially is astounding. I personally didn’t love the movie as a whole, but what I do love is the fact that it exists. And if other people who watch it end up loving it and respond to it and dig it, which many have, then that’s a bingo as far as I’m concerned.
The story is a little tough to outline, but the best I can come up with is that a family takes a trip to Disney World and everything just becomes a little bit effed up. The patriarch, Jim, is kind of really creepily obsessed with these teenage girls and drags his family along behind him as he follows them around. He starts seeing weird things and weird things start happening to him. It all goes a little haywire, not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that I found to fall in a weird no-man’s land between affectingly surreal and strangely amusing. But I also think that’s less important than the fact that most of the film was shot at Disney World, without permission from Disney, and with careful planning to avoid getting caught by Disney’s notoriously tight security at their theme parks.
As of yet the filmmakers have not been sued, and by now, after a big premiere at Sundance and relatively positive and impressed reactions from the public, it seems unlikely that Disney will pursue legal action.
There’s a certain punk rock pleasure in seeing something as seemingly all powerful as Disney get portrayed in a way that is not at all on their terms, and that’s what makes this film really stick out.
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