"Escape From Tomorrow" is No Disneyland Dream

I had to see this thing for myself. Back in January, "Escape From Tomorrow" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and attracted a huge amount of attention. You may remember it as the notorious guerrilla Disneyland film where director Randy Moore and his actors surreptitiously filmed large sections of the feature film in and around the Walt Disney World theme parks in Orlando, Florida. Disney being notoriously protective of their IP, was expected to bury it in litigation, ensuring it would never reach general audiences. And yet here we are, nine months later, and the film has been given a very limited theatrical release and has been made available online.

First things first. The movie is terrible. It depicts the nightmarish final day of the White family's trip to the Disney theme parks. In the opening scene, father Jim (Roy Abrahamsohn) is fired over the phone. He doesn't tell his wife, Emily (Elena Schuber), trying not to spoil the day for their two young children, Elliott (Jack Dalton) and Sarah (Katelynn Rodriguez). However Jim becomes increasingly frustrated with his family and disillusioned with the theme park experience. He gets sinister visions. A pair of teenage French girls (Annet Mahendru and Danielle Safady) keep distracting him. He flirts with a fellow parent (Alison Lees-Taylor). As the day goes on, things keep getting stranger.

The acting is marginal at best, the dialogue is clunky, and the plot is nearly incomprehensible. Moore's idea of satire is to juxtapose the Disney branding with adult lewdness, creepy horror movie imagery, and art school surrealism. At least, I think he's trying to do satire. When the story really goes off the deep end in the last half, and Jim apparently wanders into a paranoid science-fiction conspiracy, the movie becomes a series of nutty B-movie hijinks, each weirder and more unpleasant than the last. Some of the black-and-white cinematography is pretty good, the special effects are occasionally impressive, and the kids are cute, but the whole project is so confused and convoluted and ultimately amateurish, it's difficult to take seriously.

And yet, in terms of sheer conceptual daring, "Escape From Tomorrow" has a lot of impact. Simply having the film take place in the real Disney World adds a lot of and atmosphere and tension that a recreation couldn't hope to match. That's the real line for the "Buzz Lightyear" ride that Jim and Elliott wait in endlessly. That's really "It's a Small World" where Jim and Emily have a brief spat, even though the iconic theme song has been replaced by a generic jingle for legal reasons. The Disney parks, hotels, shuttles, merchandise, and characters are everywhere, inescapable, and you do get a sense of the company's famous insidiousness, though the ham-handed family drama at the forefront is much too blunt to capitalize on much of it.

I can see why Disney didn't feel compelled to quash the film, because it's so clearly the kind of curiosity that will only appeal to a very select audience. It's not good enough to attract the attention of mainstream viewers, though it may be bad enough to qualify as a cult film in a few years. More importantly, even without the big disclaimer at the beginning about Disney corporate not having anything to do with the film, no one in a million years would mistake "Escape From Tomorrow" for a Disney product. It's a bleak, antagonistic, unhappy piece of work from its opening frames, and presents a version of the Disney World experience that is totally antithetical to everything Disney promotes itself as being.

So they've opted to ignore the movie and not give it any attention to capitalize on, which most viewers can feel comfortable doing as well. "Escape From Tomorrow" is daring, but it's not particularly well conceived or well made. I expect that some Disney enthusiasts will get a kick out of it, for some of the unintended campiness and black humor, or just seeing familiar Disneyana through a different, subversive lens. For instance, I loved one scene that takes place during the flying simulator "Soarin'" ride, where Jim sees scantily clad women on the giant screen instead of picturesque landscapes. It's meant to be disturbing, yet another sign that Jim is losing his mind, but I found it hysterical.

Having grown up near the Disney empire in Southern California, I can definitely appreciate the impulse to take some artistic potshots at the Mouse. However, I wish the movie had been made by someone a little more creative with better writing chops. Throwing David Lynchian dream logic into the works didn't accomplish much, and made it feel like the ending was made up at the last minute. And bits of business like equating the Disney princesses with sex workers are positively old hat.

"Escape From Tomorrow" is ultimately a novelty item, and like all novelties, wears thin pretty quick.
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