“ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW” My rating: B- (Opens Oct. 11 at the Tivoli)
90 minutes | No MPAA rating:
“Escape from Tomorrow” is about as subversive as movies get.
For starters, first-time writer/director Randy Moore shot most of it surreptitiously—and without permission – at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
The cast members entered the parks like any other guests, and performed their scenes while surrounded by real tourists. Cinematographer Lucas Lee Graham employed small digital cameras that wouldn’t draw the attention of theme park authorities.
But equally as subversive is the movie’s satiric view of “The Happiest Place on Earth” as a shiny façade concealing a nightmare landscape of swirling, supernatural evil, and its depiction of the average American family as the joyless union of steady backbiting and sexual frustration.
While his wife Emily (Elena Schuber) and kids Sara and Elliot (Katelynn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton) sleep late in their Orlando-area hotel room, Jim (Roy Abramsohn) paces on the balcony in his skivvies as his boss informs him by telephone that he’s been canned.
Jim is in no mood to play the happy husband and father at Disney World, but what the hell…he’s already there, right?
Katelynn Rodriguez, Roy Abramsohn
Except that his day just keeps getting weirder and weirder.
First there are warnings posted about something called “cat flu.” (We later learn that among the alarming symptoms are hair balls.)
Jim is plagued by disturbing hallucinations in which animatronic dolls on the “It’s A Small World” ride briefly mutate into fanged, blazing-eyed demons.
And he’s so smitten with a couple of cute French teenagers (Annet Mahendru, Danielle Safady) that he spends hours stalking them, frequently forgetting that he’s supposed to be watching his kids.
Butler's Cinema Scene 