Park for class action is the documentary that deserves the infamous, deadly and long-closed water park of New Jersey.
Most of the 90-minute journey focuses on the attractions themselves, an unspoiled collection of ill-designed and dubiously crafted creations that over the years have claimed a handful of lives and caused exponentially more injuries. With minutes devoted to exploring each, you get away with an understanding of the park without having ever visited it.
The deep dive is ushered in by a lineup of Gen Xers who speak with a mix of unlimited horror and cheer about the nightmares they saw as children at the park. We also hear from former action park employees, who offer their time in the park much more targeted accounts – although you get the feeling that they are all cackling in between.
We need to pause for a minute and talk about what this place really was. Action Park was the creation of the late Gene Mulvihill, who came up with the water park as a way to squeeze non-winter income out of a ski resort in Vernon, New Jersey.
As the documentary betrays, Mulvihill was a colorful, loud personality who was big on ideas, but short on follow-ups. That biting combination is somewhat late to Action Park, a place defined by its pruned corners and party facilities. The dangerous reputation was part of the allure for visitors in the 80s and 90s. At least until it was not.
The documentary looks at each attraction covering every facet of its existence: its creation, what it was like to experience it, the injuries it caused, and, if applicable, its eventual closure. The small details that arise in these moments are often shocking.
We learn, for example, that park staff tested the unfinished Cannonball Loop – a water slide that ends in a completely upside-down loop – after Mulvihill offered anyone who dared to try it $ 100. We also learn that many of the later testers emerged from the slide with bloody holes. The cause? Human teeth stuck to the inner walls of the slide that were left behind by previous testers.
What’s great about wading through this growing image of a real – life horror show is how the account sounding comes across, rather than remotely. Some of it has to do with the presentation: Instead of serving up bloody archival images, we get simple, colorful animated sequences that illustrate the dangers without turning your stomach.
But actually, they are the talking heads. Frequent performances by the likes of Chris Gethard, Alison Becker, Seth Porges, and others keep the tone light and snoring amidst all the really scary details. The tone of her conversation gives the documentary a distinctly comic rhythm, with interjections of former staff doing the work of a traditional straight man.
It only starts off the rails in the last half hour or so, when Park for class action shifted gears to fully center the human cost of Mulvihill’s reckless efforts. At this point, the tone changes into something a little more serious as we sit with family members of one of the people who died in an Action Park attraction.
Watching this documentary can be engaging for people who have visited Action Park.
The segment is clearly intended to serve as a kind of my fault for tackling the rest of the story of the water park with such light treatment. But it feels somewhat uneasy as the documentary moves to focus on the focus on one particular death that we eventually realize was covered with a much different tone at an earlier point in the film.
The dissonance between those two sections does not do great things for the flow of the story, but it is also somewhat appropriately seen the subject matter of this documentary. The duality of Action Park is the whole reason but why it hangs in the mid-’90s, and the film hammers that home again and again, crossing through the final frames.
I should warn anyone who has visited the park in person: This sight can be triggering, and I’m not slippery. I went there with my sleeping camp several consecutive summers in the early 90s, and the act of watching the movie brought back a flood of memories.
I remember, for example, that along the way we got a camper list of slides and other attractions that were just out of bounds – and it was not a short list. I also thought about the unique experience of walking in the largely concrete and asphalt park without flip-flops, which is where the documentary actually comes into play. For me, it became a game of racing from one harmful patch to another.
Most of all, though, after watching the documentary, release a stream of visual memories. Bloody, boiling friction fires splashed across the backs of people carrying the deadly Alpine Slide. The flash of bubbles like strong current pulled me under water after my Colorado Rift River fleet fell.
In my mind I can still see the intimidating figure of Surf Hill and the crushing of people who constantly seemed to plunge into the (also deadly) wave pool. I remember the cries of angry men, who in the back were certainly drunk, struck with blows over observed cutting line.
At the same time, I also think clearly about the thrills I have associated with many of these attractions. I never took the stupid step of boarding the Alpine Slide (which was on our “hell no” list) or climbing to the top of the surf hill. But I first dived into the gulf of the golf course and spent several hours after the just-completed run back in the Colorado River Ride.
Grappling with all this helps me understand something Park for class action trying to do. There really is no way to approach this documentary through the grim perspective of a recklessly landscaped park that claimed multiple lives over a period of almost 20 years. The fact of its existence is inherently funny, when it is dark.
But you can also not laugh at that whole story. Folk the died, more than once, and in one case there were multiple deaths at the same attraction. There is no reversal of the real misery that emerged from the existence of Action Park. But there can also be no denying the strong sense of nostalgia that the people who had to visit the park in his life have, and the bizarre, perhaps misplaced sense of pride that they have in all the scars that they still carry.
That dichotomy is as much an aspect of the original Action Park experience as it is of the documentary. We will never be able to visit that place and time again, and the world is better off for it. Mar Park for class actionThe glowing dive into this conflicting past manages to make perfect use of it in the strangeness of remembering the time you put your life on the line for the thrill of a water slide.
Class Action Park streams no on HBO Max.
