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YMMV / Escape from Tomorrow

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Jim really an ephebophile or did everything that had happen to him drive him insane and cause him to think like that?
  • Awesome Music: The original orchestral soundtrack, done by award-winning classical composer Abel Korzeniowski (known for works including Penny Dreadful and A Single Man), is straight-up gorgeous, considered by both fans and detractors to be one of the best parts of the film.
  • Dancing Bear: While the film has garnered mixed-to-negative reception, much of the hype stems from the fact it was almost entirely shot at the actual parks, without Disney noticing. Disney seemed to have realized this, and made absolutely no move to block the film... thus depriving it of a lot of the publicity it appeared to have counted on.
  • Designated Hero: According to director Randy Moore, Jim was meant to be someone the audience could "root for". Given that he spends the bulk of the movie stalking two underage girls, neglecting his family and cheating on his wife in the process, it's a bit hard to sympathize with him. On the other hand, Moore has also said that Jim is not really the hero of the film, but more of an anti-hero due to his inappropriate behavior.
  • Don't Shoot the Message: While there are many reasons to criticize Disney in real life, many reviewers including Jenny Nicholson and Some Jerk with a Camera find the film's take on the subject far too abstract and tactless to hold any weight.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Even if it didn't make any goddamn sense, the movie's ending is pretty damn hard to quantify as anything resembling happy, despite the score's best efforts. Jim dies a slow, painful death by cat flu, and right after Disney janitors remove his corpse from the hotel, he somehow shows up in a car right beside the van his corpse is being hauled off in, now with a completely separate family consisting of the woman he hallucinated about on Soarin' and two daughters. It's completely unclear what this even means, with one theory from a guy who worked on the film being that Jim has now gone to Heaven. Except he's still dead either way, his wife and daughter are still devastated by losing him and now Emily will have to raise their children alone.
  • Fan Nickname: Since the "other woman" Jim sleeps with was never given a real name, Some Jerk with a Camera refers to her as "emu woman,"note  which was even the name used for her on the main page for a while. Jenny Nicholson simply refers to her as "Sexy Mom".
  • Faux Symbolism:
    • There's a scene featuring a shot featuring the Disneyworld castle and a statue of Walt Disney that pans up to show the word "JESUS" written in the sky. A visual comment on the religious-level fanaticism surrounding Disney, or an incidental shot of a random skywriter (Christian ones in particular not being uncommon around Disneyworld) the filmmakers threw in because it looked meaningful?
    • There's a bizarrely rampant theme of misogyny and sexual frustration within the film, from the claim that the princess performers are "high-priced courtesans" to the overt sexualization of 15/16-year-old girls. Writer/director Randy Moore claims this is meant to be a comment on Disneyland's own internal misogyny and sexual repression, but the film never directly explores or discusses this beyond simply having them be present.
  • Ham and Cheese: Roy Abrahamson has said in interviews that he viewed the film as a Black Comedy, specifically akin to the films that Ben Stiller could perceivably star in. For many, This Explains So Much of Jim's cartoonish overacting in what is otherwise a psychological horror film.
  • Narm: The Other Woman's backstory is that she used to be a cast member as one of the princesses until she accidentally killed a child. How? Hugging them too hard. Even more hilariously, the hug is around the little girl's legs, supporting her weight, instead of, say her torso to indicate something like suffocation.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
  • Jim's son, who spontaneously develops Black Eyes of Evil.
  • The shot of (what looks like) Jim with his head replaced by a miniature version of Spaceship Earth. And the accompanying "YOU'RE INSIDE MY...HEAD!"
    • Later in the trailer you can see a brief glimpse of an animatronic Jim head lying on the ground.
  • The shot of Jim dead of the cat flu. His eyes are particularly unsettling.
  • The decapitation on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is particularly jarring, as the opening sequence is pretty standard and even pleasant ride footage until it happens, and sets the mood for the whole movie.
  • Padding: A common complaint regarding the film is how much of it, particularly the first half, is just footage of Jim and family just visiting the park.
  • Special Effects Failure:
    • While most scenes are filmed at the actual parks, a few scenes are shot on an obvious green screen.
    • In the beginning when the passenger on Thunder Mountain gets beheaded, it's super obvious that it's CGI.
  • Squick:
    • The slow-motion, first-person shot of the girl spitting in Jim's face.
    • Also, Jim's lust for the teenage French girls, whom Randy Moore mentions in an interview are around 15 to 16 years old. In her review, Jenny Nicholson even mentions that one of the girls has visible braces, making her adolescence even more apparent, which means that Jim somehow being unaware of their youth is not a very likely possibility. The scene of them eating bananas is even more uncomfortable with this in mind.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?: In a flashback scene, it's revealed the Other Woman was a cast member, specifically a Disney Princess. However, she is wearing a generic princess costume instead of any of the Disney Princess outfits (made very obvious by the tall pointy princess hat she wears). Even worse is that it's one of the obviously green-screened scenes, meaning they had no reason not to fully dress her up.note  Not to mention that the princesses the Asian businessmen fondle actually look like proper Disney Princesses, making the Other Woman's costume come out of left field.

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