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THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS
Edited, Director of Photography & Directed by: Seth Gordon.
Produced by: Ed Cunningham.
Edited by: J. Clay Tweel.
Music by: Craig Richey.
Released by: Picturehouse.
Country of Origin: USA. 79 min. Rated PG-13.

In the same vein as last year’s Wordplay, director Seth Gordon’s over-the-top documentary has found an obsessive and unusual hobby-turned-competition that is so marginal it puts Air Guitar Nation to shame. Gordon follows Steve Wiebe, the plucky unemployed husband and father who has always come in second place, as he tries to take down the reigning Donkey Kong champion, Billy Mitchell.

In 1982, Mitchell, then 17, was featured in a two-page spread in LIFE magazine that named the world’s best arcade gamers. As many people in the film attest, the numbers and tallies behind these games were unscientific and not by any means standardized. Nonetheless, Mitchell then became known as the Donkey Kong champion, his high score of 874,300 left officially unchallenged for decades.

Since then, Mitchell has become famous and legendary in the wonderland of self-importance that is his own mind. But he has also become an icon for a small group of American eccentrics – middle-aged retro arcade gamers, joyfully obsessed with battling the games of their youth. Wiebe has become a bored father of two. Recently jobless, he decides to come in first at something: Donkey Kong. But even his wife admits that Wiebe has placed second in everything throughout his life.

For years, Mitchell has been aligned with Twin Galaxies, an online governing organization that tracks scores. The only chance Wiebe has to beat Mitchell is under Twin Galaxies’ jurisdiction. When he sends in a tape of his high score that beats Mitchell’s, Twin Galaxies dispatch men who break into Wiebe’s home to examine his garage-based Donkey Kong set-up. There, they find a package sent by Steve Sanders, the wealthy, longtime enemy of Billy Mitchell who has been waiting to bring down the self-righteous, egotistical gamer for years.

This film’s sheer amount of passive-aggressive behavior, corruption, ego, plucky competitiveness, and out-and-out shocks and surprises (watch out for Mitchell’s henchmen, including a woman in her 80s who aims to take the champion title for Q*Bert) would make turn any documentary into a theatrical blast. The surprises never stop coming in this rollercoaster ride of absurdity.

But what makes Gordon’s film stand out from the crowd of equally entertaining rivals is something that Air Guitar Nation and Wordplay never had: heroes and villains. It’s incredibly rare to find subject matter where some are so detestable, so cartoonish, so ridiculous, and others so altruistic that you, without fail, wind up crying and cheering alongside their struggles. I won’t spoil the end for you – it’s a long journey and the end result is well worth the wait – but let me just say that the above summary takes place within the first 25 minutes. Zachary Jones
August 20, 2007