Escape from Tomorrow – Yeti
Escape from Tomorrow is that movie that gathered a huge buzz for being shot on location in Disney theme parks without permission from the House of Mouse. The synopsis for it on IMDb says, “In a world of fake castles and anthropomorphic rodents, an epic battle begins when an unemployed father’s sanity is challenged by a chance encounter with two underage girls on holiday,” but that really doesn’t cover it. I had heard about this flick for awhile and this morning, while browsing Shudder, I found it and decided, “Hey, why not?” Well, I’m here to tell you why not.
To say this movie is hot garbage would be an insult to hot garbage. About forty-five minutes into the “movie” I said something to the effect of, “If I were to review this it would just say, ‘Thanks, I hate it.’”. Then the movie pissed me off and here we are. There’s no real plot. There are about sixty five subplots that are never developed, though. So there’s that, I guess. I can’t comment on the pacing because there’s no fucking story being told. This is not even a fucking movie. It’s just a bunch of scenes strung together. It’s like a cinematic hostage situation and all the scenes were better off being executed. Oh and the acting is fucking garbage. The guy playing the unemployed father legitimately thought this was a comedy. I don’t know how the fuck he thought it was a comedy when his character is basically a fucking pedophile. Assuming that it was a comedy is almost as fucking stupid as this “movie” is.
Look , the only “epic battle” being fought in this abomination is Jim, the unemployed father, fighting his wood while he ogles two teenage girls for two thirds of the goddamned thing. I mean, his wife even says that they’re a little young, even for him. So, yeah. The character that writer/director Randy Moore describes as walking the line between hero and antihero gives off some pretty big pedo predator vibes the whole time. He goes so far as to take his kids on the same rides as these teenage girls as an excuse to stalk them. When he’s not stalking high school girls, he’s staring at every set of breasts he can lay his eyes on. It’s like his only character traits are being horny and being a creep. Yet, somehow, he’s the protagonist.
I guess I’m a pretty progressive guy but I don’t think I’ve ever called anything misogynistic before. What Escape from Tomorrow lacks in substance, plot, character development, or anything redeeming it makes up for in misogyny. There are a bunch of female roles in this movie and not one of them is the role of “likeable character”. His wife is a nagging, fun-sucking, over-bearing shrewbeast. We’ve talked about the underage sex objects. Then there’s a woman who hypnotizes and fucks Jim while her kid and his daughter are asleep in the other room. She turns out to be a kidnapper witch person. Even the Disney princesses are literally turned into high class call girls for Asian businessmen. No. Seriously. There’s a whole super-long sequence featuring what are supposed to be the cast members at Disney World being felt up by Asian dudes in suits.
After I watched this pile of steaming dog shit, I went to YouTube to see if anyone else could make heads or tails of what the fuck happened. The short answer was “no”. That’s because it doesn’t make any fucking sense. What I did find out was why a movie this bad had such a pretentious feel to it. Spoiler alert, it’s because Randy Moore is a pretentious little prick. In every interview spot about the movie he goes on and on about how Disney is like a “religion” and looks down on people who can enjoy the escapism of a theme park. He’s that guy who thinks that anyone who likes something popular is a sheep and he’s obviously superior even though he doesn’t understand the difference between nostalgia and indoctrination. Apparently being a smug, bitter, judgmental fuckwit makes you superior in his world. It was through going down this smug smirking rabbit hole that I found where he called pedo Jim a character that walks the line between hero and antihero. This slimy little fuckbag went as far as to say that the princesses at Disney theme parks were sexualized. I guess because they’re portraying pretty young girls they’re sexualized. I don’t know, man. I went into this day not knowing who the fuck Randy Moore was and now I have someone else to hate. Good times.
Speaking of how pretentious this fucking “movie” is, they had the audacity to ad a fucking intermission screen. By the time that came up, I thought the movie was almost over. But no. It was only halfway there. This movie is ninety fucking minutes and I swear to the gods of the abyss it felt like the longest three hours of my life. I felt like the intermission was just there to taunt me.
How bad is this movie, really? Well, considering the big buzz about it everyone thought that Disney would come and shut it down. They didn’t. I would assume it was because if anyone at the House of Mouse saw it, they’d see how fucking horrible it was and just write it off. That is what I implore you to do.
All in all would I recommend this movie? Not to my worst fucking enemy. A company with a million and one lawyers who is notorious for suing the shit out of whoever they please just ignored it. You should too. If you do decide that you want to torture yourself it’s on Shudder right now or you could waste a couple bucks and watch it on Amazon.
