Review of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007) by Ryan R — 25 Jun 2010

An amazing tale of intrigue, corruption, and the triumph (?) of the underdog.

And it's about video games. Specifically, Donkey Kong. Billy Mitchell is the reigning champ. An arrogant,preening, narcissist who's like Michael Scott without the wit, he rules over his petty kingdom of similarly maladjusted nerd archetypes. We're introduced to this world of men and women (HA!, pretty much just men) who value a high gaming score above all else. Men like Steve Sanders, who was caught lying about his high score back in 1982, and was forgiven by Billy and became his most loyal subject. Men like Walter Day, who runs the Galaxy Something Something, the most respected Video Game Whatever in the whole world, all without earning a penny, he assures us. He does it for the love of the sport.

In the first quarter of the movie, we're encouraged, Christopher Guest style, to look down our collective noses at these weirdos and their bizarre addiction, and the laughs are quick and cheap and easy, especially at Billy Mitchell's expense.

Enter Steve Wiebe. He's a mild-mannered Boening engineer who's parents think he may be slightly autistic. Steve is laid off from his job and becomes a stay at home dad, while his wife works. Nothing much else to do but try to break an old Donkey Kong record, right?

And that's where the fun starts. Because the fix is in. Billy, Steve, Walter, and the rest of the cronies at Galaxy Whatever aren't going to let some young upstart upset the throne. They don't accept the record-breaking high score that Wiebe sent in by videotape, accusing him of playing with a rigged machine. So Wiebe must show up in person to defend his honor. Will Billy show up too? Or does Billy have more plans up his sleeve? (He totally does).

Wiebe's wife acts as our surrogate. She's openly contemptuous of the amount of time he spends playing the game, and worries about his continued lack of employment. But she begins to come around when she sees the injustice of it all, just like we do, and by the end the movie has pulled the mother of all fast ones; not only is this not a joke anymore, but it's damned serious business. The last half hour is edge-of-your-seat intrigue and suspense, not for the faint of heart. And because it's a documentary and not a movie, a happy ending is not guaranteed, making things even more suspenseful. I can't recommend this enough.

Plus, there's an old lady who is the world wide Q-Bert champion. That's pretty cool.