Jesse: "So... you like.. uh... playing games?"

This weekend the makers of Superbad Greg Mottola bring us the hilarious coming-of-age comedy Adventureland. In the summer of ’87 recent college grad James (Jesse Eisenberg) realises finding work is not as easy as he had first thought and is forced to work a dead-end job at his local amusement park. But then he meets Em (Kristen Stewart) and the job isn’t all he has to think about.
To celebrate the release, we take a look at a selection of other films famous for their amusement park scenes…

Keifer Sutherland played the leader of the vampire pack in the legendary film Lost Boys

Lost Boys

This film’s title is a reference to J. M. Barrie’s Lost Boys in his stories about Peter Pan in Neverland.  That’s about as far as that connection goes though; this 1987 classic is about two young Arizonans who move to California and end up fighting vampires.
Starring Keifer Sutherland, the leader of the vampire pack, it has a fantastic cast of 80s legends Corey Haim, Corey Feldman and Jason Patric, to name a few. The special effects aren’t exactly revolutionary, but this film paved the way for many scary teen vampire flicks to come – possibly including Twilight, in which Kristen Stewart also stars.
Anyway, the opening scene is a murder in a fair ground.  Not quite the same style as Adventureland, but an amusement park nonetheless.

Big

After being turned away from a theme park ride (in front of a cute older girl) for being too small, Josh Baskin (David Moscow) wishes he could be come big.  Angrily, he struts around the local fair ground until he sees the Zoltar machine, a plastic wizard promising to fulfil the user’s wishes. He makes a wish to be big and overnight, he has transformed into a 35 year old adult. Tom Hanks is brilliant as a 13 year old in a 35 year old’s body.  When he realises he misses the simplicity of childhood he, along with his 13 year old best friend goes in search for the Zoltar machine, around amusement parks and all sorts.

Hanks: "can you tell me the lotto numbers for tomorrow's draw please?"

Final Destination 3

The third installment in the Final Destination series in which a
tragic event happens – someone forsees it and tells people to avoid what will happen, then one-by-one those that were ‘supposed to die’ get their clogs popped in their own spectacularly gory fashion. Hint: it’s not a very good film and you should probably watch the first one if you’re into premonition-type storylines. This somewhat predictable episode (having the exact same storyline as the previous two films) is based around a roller coaster accident.

Grease

“You’re the one that I want!”  The famous final scene of the 1978 musical where Danny (John Travolta) and Sandy (Olivia Newton John) finally reunite.  It all takes place at a fairground and unlike the previous three films finally we have an amusement park scene where something happy happens!

Chevy Chase stars in the hilarious National Lampoon Vacation series

National Lampoon’s Vacation

This is the first of the National Lampoon Vacation films, and is credited as the funniest.  It follows the Griswold’s journey to their holiday destination of  ‘Walley World’ in California.  Anything that could possibly go wrong on the way does go wrong.  When they eventually arrive at the park they are told by a talking statue of ‘Marty Moose’ that the park is shut for two weeks!  So that this hasn’t been a wasted trip, dad Clark (Chevy Chase) buys a BB gun and breaks his family into the park.  Hilarity ensues as the SWAT team are called to control them.

Jurassic Park

This seems to be the only movie set entirely in a theme park, yet it is probably the least related to Adventureland give  that this park’s ‘theme’ is dinosaurs!  Using DNA they have been bought back to life and the park was due to be opened to the public before a member of staff was eaten by a Velociraptor.  Where Adventureland makes working at a theme park out to be dull and boring, we reckon working at Jurassic Park would be quite the opposite…
Adventureland is in cinemas now via Miramax films