The trippiest place on earth.
This review was written 2 years too late
THIS is a terrific film.
Family man Jim is on the last day of his holiday in Disney World/Land (take your pick) when his brain starts to go a little haywire.
And why wouldn’t it?
Never mind the demands of a young family and an uninterested wife, he’s surrounded by Disney madness and all-round fakery. What else could push a ready-made mid-life crisis candidate over the edge?
As Jim tries to make the best of a day with his kids, he gets distracted by a fantasy over a pair of young, carefree French teenagers, maybe has a midday rendezvous with middle-aged pseudo-dominatrix who might once have been a Disney princess, not to mention finding out just what is going-on inside the Epcot Centre.
Let’s not forget the children’s nurse who breaks down in tears after fixing up the knee of Sarah, Jim’s daughter who has been pushed over by the bullying son of an obese man on a mobility scooter.
You get the idea yet?
Director Randy Moore has delivered delicious, surreal, fantastical stuff, made all the better by being rooted in the home of such scary, mind-roam madness as a theme park, especially one with mouse ears. Disney upper level staff are all there, smiling and welcoming the kids. Disney low level staff are all there, in mouse-badged overalls taking out the bodies.
Its black and white photography is a crisp and perfect razor-sharp delight, occasionally set-off with a bit of back projection but that goes beautifully in hand with the Bernard Herrmann-esque score, which is an enveloping delight.
Mostly shot, guerrilla-style on-location by a crew pretending to be holidaymakers, “Escape from Tomorrow” really is incredibly well done. It invokes Lynch’s “Eraserhead“, McGoohan’s “The Prisoner“, not to mention a fair bit of Disney itself.
A tale of madness, beautiful, Mickey Mouse madness. Watch.
Trailer
