Friday, April 11, 2014

Escape from Tomorrow (2013)

Director: Randy Moore
Writer:    Randy Moore
Cast:       Roy Abramsohn, Elena Schuber, Katelyn Rodriguez, Jack Dalton

A family is spending their vacation on Disneyland. Husband, Jim, gets to know from his boss that he has been fired on the last day morning and he keeps it a secret from his wife. As the day goes on Jim becomes more and more hallucinatory and paranoid even as he begins stalking a couple of French chicks and his day grows stranger and stranger.

As the saying goes from Tropic Thunder:' You just went full retard, never go full retard'. Its the same with surreal films. There is a balance that you have to maintain to keep your audience fully interested till the end. This is what separates great films from just good in this genre. This is what separates the likes of David Lynch from pretenders. I was also reminded of Terry Gilliam's works like 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' and 'Brazil' while watching this film. By no means am I saying the film is bad. It is more than good but the problem is that very early on itself you get into the mood that anything goes in this enterprise and kind of not get too interested. It doesn't help when the subtext is not at all subtle. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that its about the artificiality that America reeks of with all its trademark franchisees like Disneyland, McD, Las Vegas etc.

The film was shot guerrilla style inside Disneyland without their permission. The script was accessed through the actors' iphones and was shot using video mode of Canon EOS 5D Mark 2. The director edited the film in Korea so that the cat does not go out of the bag too early. It got entry into the Sundance film  festival and Disney didn't try to suppress the film maybe fearing 'Streisand Effect'.It is definitely worth a watch and a commendable effort from the team considering the constraints with which they were working.

Rating: 3.5/5

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