More ‘Movies in the Park’

Last year’s successful Movies in the Park series returns this year, once again on Thursday nights, and will be expanding from two evenings to three.

“The events were a huge success last year,” says Jeremy Parker, with Petaluma’s Recreation Services, the sponsor of the series, “as approximately 300 to 500 families attended the two events, and everyone had a ton of fun!”

The free movie nights, which begin screening just after dusk at Lucchesi Park, will once again be preceded by games and other kids’ activities, with a number of food trucks and other vendors in the nearby parking lot.

The series will begin this year on Thursday, July 26, with the 1989 Disney comedy-adventure “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” in which a scientist dad (Rick Moranis) accidently miniaturizes his children and a next-door neighbor. Reduced to the size of insects, the children must survive a night or two full of dangers (falling sprinkler drops the size of boulders, carnivorous scorpions and whirling lawn mowers, and a killer bowl of breakfast cereal.

The second film, screening Thursday, Aug. 9, is the animated “Despicable Me 3,” the continuing story of super-villain Gru (voice of Steven Carrel) and his adopted daughters. The season ends with a final screening, on Thursday, Sept. 6, of Disney-Pixar’s “Coco,” the Oscar-winning fantasy about music, family and Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

Pre-show activities begin at 6 p.m. each night. Visitors are invited to bring lawn chairs and blankets.