Review of Escape from Tomorrow (2013) by Jesse O — 29 May 2014

I've been dreading doing this review ever since I finished this movie yesterday. I have no real idea why honestly. It's not like anybody reads these reviews, I do them because I enjoy writing them, but this seems like the type of movie where if you disliked it its fans will claim it's because you didn't understand it.

There's a lot of that in the internet, and with the anonymous nature of it, some people think they can get away with saying horrid things just because you have a dissenting opinion. But that's another discussion for another day, and another website.

What is there to say about this film? One thing I will say is that it's certainly not boring. The problem comes in the fact that this is a concept and nothing else. I'd like to say that the first 50 minutes, or so, of the movie are deliberately paced, but I can't.

Nothing really happens outside of Jim constantly following some Parisian teenagers, like a pervert, and seeing surrealist visions as he's going on the rides at Disney World. Things start to get even crazier near the end, but by this point it's just simply too late.

People made such a big deal about the film, and how it was shot, at Disney World without their permission, that I think people actually forgot that they hadn't seen the final product yet. I think it takes a LOT of balls to do what these people did, and how they actually pulled it off without any of the workers at Disney picking up on it.

I have tons of respect for the cast and crew for managing to pull this off. But the fact of the matter is this, that there's nothing in this movie that a first year film student couldn't have done, and probably done it better as well.

I can't imagine how long the script was, there's literally next to nothing going on in this film. It's all running in place until Jim is incapacitated by the security guards and taken to Epcot people, which is when the plot, if you can even call it that, starts to reveal the big picture.

I'm not trying to shit on the effort made into actually pulling the film off without no one noticing. I''m just saying that the effort to pull it off wasn't made into putting together a great film that would make all of this effort worth it.

I'm sure the film has a deeper social commentary about mass entertainment, as is mentioned in the description, and how Disney, as a corporation, will cover up horrible incidents in order to keep up Disney World's appearance as the happiest place on earth intact, that part I liked, but I just feel it's a hollow way to give the film some depth.

It doesn't work, in my opinion, because it makes the mistake of thinking its pretentiousness is substance. It's just not. I hate to bring up the comparison again but this feels like something a first year film student would do.

At least the student film would be much shorter than this. This isn't really that long of a movie, but when you don't have NEARLY enough content to fill that up, then it can be a very tedious experience to watch.

Cut this film in half and I'm pretty sure it'd be better. It would be a marginal improvement, as the script would still be lacking, but an improvement nonetheless. The film wouldn't have felt so empty, at its core, if it was only 45-50 minutes long.

Now onto the stuff I DID like. I did think the film was very visually inventive and it hearkened back to something right out of Hollywood's Golden Age, even right down to the score, which was light.

At least the film got SOMETHING right. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut twice a day, I suppose. I think it's obvious that I REALLY didn't like the film. I even think I'm being generous in giving it 2 stars.

That implies that it's ok or below average, at best. And I don't think that at all, I think it's a bad movie that took a lot of effort to plan out and to actually film. So, for that effort, and actually getting the film distributed without Disney suing their asses off, I give the film this score.

But I didn't think this movie was good at all. People made a big deal about nothing, that's all I can say. Maybe this film will endure and stand the test of time...maybe in 20 years this will be considered a surrealist classic.

Or maybe that's just my imagination playing tricks on me.