Saturday, September 15, 2007

Movie Review: The King of Kong

The King of Kong is a documentary about people (ok they are all grown white men) pursuing world records in old (they call them classic) arcade video games; specifically Donkey Kong. Get over the subject matter and see this film. It's as good as Murderball but much funnier.

A Life magazine article in the early 80s gathered the premiere video game players of the day. Billy Mitchell was the elite of them and was the first to achieve a perfect score at Pac-Man and holds the record high score on Centipede and has an astounding Donkey Kong record that stood unapproached for decades. In 2003 Steve Wiebe decided to try to break the Donkey Kong record. Twin Galaxies is a web site that officiates video game high scores. They set the rules and Billy is one of the founders. Steve has to jump through various hoops to have his scores accepted.

The film sets up Steve as the underdog good guy and Billy as the villain trying to keep his title. Steve has a loving family and a history of lots of talent (musical, athletic, smart) and failures just when success seems to be in his grasp. His own mother says she thought he was slightly autistic or at least obsessive-compulsive. He was laid off from Boeing the day he bought his house and is now a high school science teacher. Billy is quite successful at both video games and the family restaurant he runs and the chicken wing sauce he sells. He has an ego to match. We see his his wife (whose neckline seems to be that of a video game character) but his kids are never mentioned in the film.

Various people explain what's so difficult about Donkey Kong and there are clever visuals of Steve writing notes on the screen. On screen graphs plot the progress to the records. The underdog vs the establishment theme recalls Rocky and not just when "Eye of the Tiger" is playing. "You're the Best" playing during the practice scenes references The Karate Kid. These kinds of things alleviate the tedium of many shots of people playing video games.

The interviews and characters help that a lot as well. One says "I wanted the pretty girls to say 'Hi, I hear you're good at Centipede'" but lamented it never happened. A self-described "Mr. Awesome" describes Steve's capitulation to a ruling against him as he "chumpatized himself". If this same film were released as directed by Christopher Guest it would have been called a wonderful mocumentary, but it's all true (if not somewhat biased in presentation). It's never more biting than when Steve's young daughter tells him "I never knew the Guinness Book of World Records was so important." When he says "A lot of people read that book" her penetrating response is "Some people sort of ruin their lives to be in there".

Since the film was made, on July 13, 2007, the 25th anniversary of his original world record Billy Mitchell scored 1,050,200 points setting a new world record in front of a live audience of hundreds of onlookers. Steve Wiebe is already working at overtaking it.

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