Delayed Reaction: Class Action Park

Premise: A documentary about the infamous New Jersey water park.

If you don't know about Action Park, it's a water park that was open mainly in the 1980s that was famous basically for being dangerous. It had an unscrupulous (at worst) and irresponsible (at best) owner who had a unique philosophy about how to run a park. People who went there have a lot of fondness for the park, even while recognizing the problems with it. 

That's the core dichotomy of Class Action Park: People liked it and it didn't like people. This documentary is structured really simply but also super effectively. The first hour is story after story from people about how crazy this place was. The last half hour then reminds us that it wasn't actually a laughing matter. It's one of the more effective displays of refocusing a story that I've seen. The first hour doesn't hide why this place was a problem. There are constant stories of people getting injured and the ways the management side-stepped the law. We know pretty early on about people dying there. We know that serious injuries were under-reported and commonplace. Since everyone is laughing about it now, it's easy to focus on "I can't believe they made this slide" rather than "They shouldn't've been allowed to make this slide". When the doc makes the abrupt turn in the last half hour, they've actually laid all the groundwork already. Normally, I'd expect a documentary to show all the good stuff about a topic for most of the movie, then put all the bad stuff into a single section so it doesn't take over the narrative (i.e. "This mayor got all these projects completed and improved the safety of the city. And, yes, he did assault all those women."). Class Action Park instead just pauses and says "I don't think you've been listening to what we've been telling you. People died. People were injured. This place was corrupt". You really do come out of the movie with the right perspective on it.

A couple small things did bother me though. From the way they talk about this place in the movie, I kind of expected there to be more deaths. Either they were exaggerating about how dangerous the place was or they didn't stress the number of non-fatal serious injuries enough. Is that just me?

 

I was just barely too young for this movie. You see, I'm a "90s kid". This is definitely an "80s kid" movie. It gets a little obnoxious toward the end when they start pulling out the old "you can't get away with that anymore" or "kids are too soft these days" bromides. And I say this fulling aware that "90s kids" are the worst about that on the internet. Even though I do relate to that content, that stuff also annoys me.

 

This is a really solidly made documentary. Well structured. Interesting assortment of talking heads. A surprisingly good amount of footage from a variety of sources. This won't be winning any grand jury prizes, but it's exactly what I'm hoping for when I start a documentary.

 

Verdict: Strongly Recommend