The King of Kong

KING OF KONG is one of the greatest movies I've seen in a while - not documentaries, movies. The film-making here is nothing short of extraordinary - building suspense, creating anticipation, and playing with the archetypes like the best Hollywood movies.

If you have ever played the original Donkey Kong arcade game, or on the original Nintendo, you have to see this movie. I have never beaten Level 3 on the third cycle - the spring on the elevator stage, if you know what I'm talking about, is going extremely fast. These guys get beyond 20 cycles.

I don't want to give anything away...I heard they are going to make this a feature movie with actors, but I think that eliminates the main draw of this concept - these guys are in their forties, in some freak cases have wives and children, and they play Donkey Kong with as much heart as Lance Armstrong rode bikes. They are some of the strongest characters I've seen in a movie since STAR WARS. To best summarize how enjoyable this movie is, after watching the DVD for the first time, I immediately restarted it from the beginning, and watched it again.

The best movie I've seen this year! I laughed to the point of exhaustion. I'd recommend it to anyone with a heartbeat. Must see!The only thing I can't get over is that this Billy Mitchell guy is a real person. I mean you can't make up a character like this. And Steve Weibe... how humble can you get. I mean the guy is the poster child for humility. (Okay so here is where I admit that I actually know Steve personally. Thing is, he actually IS this humble. No lie. For his recent 20 year high school reunion he listed as his proudest accomplishment: "recieving my teacher's certificate", no mention of Donkey Kong. Now that's the kind of hero everyone should look up to. Especially anyone with a huge ego. And lord knows there are enough of those to go around. So don't walk, RUN to the movie theater and see this movie. You won't regret it. (Just make sure you use the bathroom before the movie starts, you won't want to miss a second!)

If it weren't for the sincerity of it all- or maybe because of it- King of Kong could be conceived of as a mockumentary. But there's no joking with these guys, which sometimes makes it a lot of fun to watch the competition between Billy Mitchell and Steve Weebie (right way to say the name?), where sycophants and idiosyncrasies fly on the former's self-spun empire/network and on the latter just your average suburban housewife and kids going somewhat begrudgingly along the ride. It's a saga though not just about them, but about the world of gaming, of the mind-set that pervades everyone from lawyers to 'Roy Awesome' to little old ladies competing at Qubert, and the nature of competition itself. Not since Rocky- and maybe even better in its exuberance and humility- has one seen a tale of the underdog and the king played out in odds that should seem somewhat silly.

But what's so amazing is how first-time director Seth Gordon plunges the viewer into this world, and it's immediately recognizable to anyone over 18 and under, well, 55 to 100- anyone who's ever gone to play one of the "old-school" arcade games like Donkey Kong or Pacman/Mrs. Pacman or even Pong. We see how the players have to not just go into the games haphazardly by luck; like football, there's game-plans and strategies, and like that sport there are also some obstacles that are apart of the nature of the design of the sport. There's a whole incredible facet one takes for granted, for example, about the technology of the machines, which despite being eclipsed many times over by new systems can still be tampered with, as is the case with Steve's first machine that reaches the top score, and then discredited because of a chip possibly (or not) being replaced or implanted in to give leverage at a non-gamer store.

Yet the more slippery side-stepping for players is what's even more intriguing. Characterization can be a tricky thing for the documentary director to deal with, but in King of Kong it becomes something of a controversy left by the wayside as Billy surpasses Steve's score with a game he played recorded on videotape- while Steve set his score by an official Twin Galaxies referee (Walter Day, to be exact, who's a character in and of himself)- with more than a few skips right were the score should register. Saying it skims the line of reality and mockumentary comes with the territory- after a while watching Mitchell is like watching someone who's improvising as he goes along, hiding behind his perfectionist guise as a world-class champ and purveyor of fine hot sauces with his fake-buxom wife and lackeys watching every move Steve makes.

Aside from it being compelling storytelling as one sees the transformation of Steve from failed baseball pitcher and drummer to a Donkey Kong (and Donkey Kong Junior) champ, making all-time high scores while his kids cry about their poor behinds, it's one of the best kinds of sport-genre features in years. Many times one sees this played out, and it's been parodied in the likes of Dodgeball ("Nobody makes me bleed my own blood" came to mind once or twice looking at Mitchell, and his smart but biased cronies are like classic supporting characters), and the clichés and conventions get the better of the narrative. This time there's no pressure to push it into what's expected: we genuinely care what happens in this battle of the joystick, as Steve sheds genuine tears playing his ass off at all accounts of live events whilst Billy sulks away in his living room hearing the updates on his phone.

As far as triumph-of-the-human-spirit stories go, King of Kong is hilarious entertainment, sometimes for all the strangest (Day's would-be musical career) and silliest reasons (what's so special about the Guiness book of records, Steve's daughter asks), but engrossing as documentaries should get- one of the best of the year in fact.

King of Kong (or Billy vs. Steve, basically), is an excellent film about a rivalry that says a lot about competition in our culture. The movie portrays Billy, the Donkey Kong Champion, doing everything in his power to keep his record and to deny Steve Wiebe (wee-Bee) the title of world record holder in Donkey Kong. Steve is an outsider in this culture where Billy is an icon, and at first there are people within the video game community who do not want him to succeed. It becomes kind of a struggle between good and evil, as the powers that be try to hold down those not in power. Suddenly, Steve is the guy you're rooting for, if only just to beat that smart-ass Billy. It is a journey that takes you through the darker and seedier side of the video game revolution of the '80s. If it seems silly to be writing about such weighty issues of good and evil when a movie is about a video game, watch the movie: it really does the job of making you care about what happens to these odd, fascinating people.

This movie proves two things: 1), a documentary really can be about anything, and 2), movies aren't always what they're about, but how they are about, as Ebert puts it. This movie begins by retracing the early video game craze of the early 80's, and it focuses on the 20 year plus record-holder of the highest score ever for 'Donkey Kong'. His name is Billy Mitchell, and he's the Michael Jackson or the Wayne Gretzky of the video gaming world. We learn of other players who helped to define the era, one who no longer plays but gives much of his time away by refereeing video game competitions. Perhaps all that would've made for an interesting doc in it's own right, but in walks Steve Wiebe, a pretty normal guy with a wife and two kids, and we learn how he got into video gaming after a handful of setbacks in his life. As it becomes clear to us that Wiebe is an amazing player in his own right, politics enter the picture and we end up with a fascinating study about the nature of people that gets beyond simple competitiveness and digs a little deeper into the psyches of how we perceive our own selves. I'm so happy to have run into this title. You don't have to be interested or know anything about video games to really care about this movie.