The King of Kong

[August 22nd, 2007]

[ONE WEEK ONLY, DIRECTOR APPEARANCE] The screen has long been rife with nonviolent antagonists whose slimy intimidations cross the line of passable aggression. Whether it’s Michael Douglas’ seething businessman Gordon Gekko in Wall Street or the stealthy intimidation of Big Tobacco in Michael Mann’s The Insider , cinema has shown us bad guys don’t need guns or terrorist plots to corrode heroes.

But one thing we’ve never seen is the wickedness festering in the coin slots of popular arcade games. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters gives us a look into a particularly dastardly evil—the Competitive Video Game Mafia.

Seth Gordon’s riotously funny documentary follows Steve Wiebe, a milquetoast science teacher from Washington and a prodigy of Donkey Kong . Wiebe’s a master of button-mashing, able to jump barrels and climb ladders in the eternal quest to save a beautiful princess from a deranged gorilla. But when he videotapes his finest performance—the highest score ever—and submits it to record-keepers, in comes the Donkey Kong Devil.

It’s former record-holder Billy Mitchell, who sets the wheels turning against Wiebe. Sporting a goofy beard-ponytail and an American-flag necktie, Mitchell looks like Chuck Norris’ wussy brother. And, like Mighty Chuck, Mitchell can smell fear. He’s a classic villain—at any point, you expect him to don a black bowler hat and strap Wiebe’s joystick to some railroad tracks.

In his quest to discredit Wiebe, Mitchell dispatches goons to dismantle Wiebe’s DK machine and examine its motherboard, engages in all manner of intimidation and grandstanding and even sends spies out to report on Wiebe’s scores at arcades. He’s a brilliantly sinister man, a cheeseball with a Botoxed wife who cruises arcades like Don Corleone.

Wiebe and Mitchell’s bouts are the core of the film, but the weirdos around them are an added treat, and seem to have emerged from a Christopher Guest mockumentary. There’s Mitchell’s adversary Mr. Awesome, fighting a decades-long battle to have his Missile Command score recognized. There are Mitchell’s self-proclaimed disciples who do his dirty work. There’s even a Zen-Buddhist video-game “referee.”

It’s all a blast, and the film chugs along to the ultimate sports-movie soundtrack, including “Eye of the Tiger” and the theme from The Karate Kid . In its heart, Kong is a classic David-and-Goliath story. Only this time, Goliath is a sociopathic grownup version of the geekiest kid in high school, and the results are far funnier. PG-13.