Experiencing the Ups, Downs of Intriguing ‘Thrill Ride’

“Thrill Ride: The Science of Fun” isn’t quite the white-knuckle adventure its promoters claim. Yet it’s exciting even without being in 3-D as you might expect from an Imax movie of this kind.

The large-format picture recounts the history of roller coasters, beginning in 18th century Russia with sleds and wood-framed ice slides, and traces their technological evolution up through the latest versions. At the same time, it blends information with experience.

“Thrill Ride” doesn’t just document the twists and turns with archival illustrations and rare film footage of the earliest rides or explain the gravitational dynamics of roller coasters with table-top demonstrations--all of which is fascinating. It takes you on the rides and, what is more intriguing, into the computer-generated hyper-reality of simulated rides designed for pilot and astronaut training, as well as for the entertainment industry.

Naturally a movie about thrill rides that asks, “What is a roller coaster but the promise of pure sensation?” demands to be made in 3-D--especially when its motto is “fear is fun” and its tongue-in-cheek safety warnings remind you to keep your hands and feet inside the theater.

But once you’ve accepted the disappointment that “Thrill Ride” won’t be taking you over the top into 3-D free fall, you may find yourself feeling grateful. The tamer 2-D format minimizes the chance you might do what astronauts have been known to do in the NASA motion simulator (or as it’s been dubbed, the LRV, for Lunch Review Vehicle). (The real reason the picture wasn’t made in 3-D, director Ben Stassen says, is that he combined new footage with recent footage of thrill rides already shot in 2-D. “Jumping back and forth from 2-D to 3-D would have been too disturbing,” he explains.)

“Thrill Ride” incorporates excerpts from 13 previous “ride” films, including “Superstition” (featuring Elvira), “Secrets of the Lost Temple,” “Asteroid Adventure,” “Back to the Future: The Ride,” “This Is Cinerama” and extensive portions of Stassen’s own “The Devil’s Mine Ride” (featuring Paul Harper), a live-action film brilliantly enhanced by computer graphics imagery.

Perhaps the most revealing sequences in “Thrill Ride” show how computer designs make use of gravity and kinetic forces to create seemingly impossible rides of uncanny precision dressed out in elaborate, even supernatural environments.

For all their fascination, however, the most entertaining footage has nothing to do with the law of gravity or any of the live-action views shot from various amusement park thrill rides.

It’s a storytelling scene made possible by computer technology, in which the old coal miner from “The Devil’s Mine Ride” appears backstage and doubles as his look-alike brother, to demonstrate the clever ventriloquism that Hollywood sound designs can create.

Although “Thrill Ride” does not match the visual impact or the natural beauty of “Into the Deep,” which, for example, takes an astonishing 3-D dive to the bottom of the sea, it nonetheless ranks among the best Imax documentaries this viewer has seen.

* MPAA rating: G. Times guidelines: nothing to worry about in terms of kids.

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‘Thrill Ride: The Science of Fun’

Paul Harper: The Coal Miner

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark

A New Wave International production distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Director-executive producer Ben Stassen. Producer Charlotte Huggins. Writers Kurt Frey and Stassen. Narrator Harry Shearer. Photography Sean MacLeod Phillips. Production designer Ray Spencer. Music Michael Stearns and Christopher Hoag. Animation Trix & Movida. Running time: 40 minutes.

* At Edwards 21 Cinemas, Irvine Spectrum, 65 Fortune, Irvine, (714) 450-4900.