The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

Released:  August 17^th, 2007

Rated:  PG-13

Studio:  Picturehouse

Starring:  Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell, Walter Day

Directed by:  Seth Gordon

Personal Bias Alert:  likes underdogs, rarely achieves my dreams

9.5 of 10

            I’m a big fan of classic stories.  It was something I noticed gradually as I looked back on the movies, books, and television that I loved.  I thought my heart laid the oddballs, the slightly off-beat comedies with an arched brow and the dramas that eschew painfully close to home.  I do love these things, but the classics are there too, weaving their way slyly through the comedies, the dramas, and yes, the documentaries.

            The King of Kong:  A Fistful of Quarters is one of those classics, a pure underdog story as traditional as Rudy or David and Goliath.  Billy Mitchell is our Goliath, parading through the film as a successful business owner and titan of classic arcade gaming, with a good-looking wife and a perfectly coifed mullet to boot.  Mitchell is even self-aware enough to note “If I have all this good fortune, if everything’s rolled my way, if all these balls have bounced in my favor, there’s some poor bastard out there getting his screws put to him.”  That cues a cut to our David, Steve Weibe.  Weibe is a man who’s consistently come up short in life.  He’s never outright failed, he’s too talented for that, but as his wife notes, things just never quite worked out for him.  The contrast between the two men is instantly noticeable, and the goofy, sensitive Weibe immediately gains the audience’s favor.

            Director/editor Seth Gordon initially intended to make a much broader documentary about competitive gaming, but upon entering the world found this rivalry and it’s perfectly cast archetypes.  Smart enough to know a good story when he saw one, he focused in on the two men’s battle for Donkey Kong supremacy and admits to twisting facts in order to construct the story.  That may be off-putting to some documentary purists, but in this case it doesn’t bother me.  After all, the world record on an arcade game isn’t life or death stuff, and the story it pulls off is powerful and entertaining enough to overlook pesky things like facts.

            Gordon stumbled into a hell of a story, but give him plenty of credit for hammering it into the clean, funny end product we get to see.  He allegedly had over 300 hours of video to work with, and he not only whittled that down into a tight 79 minute tale, he expertly cuts it all together to evoke sympathy and laughter at the exact right times.  Not only does Gordon know when we need to see Weibe break down in frustration or Mitchell gloating over the phone, he knows when to add in side characters to up the stakes.  Fellow Donkey Kong contender Brian Kuh shows up to hover over Weibe’s live record attempts, keep Mitchell constantly informed, and have a quietly devastating moment as Weibe beats him to a record.  Other characters pop in and out, but they’re always there to help along Weibe and Mitchell’s story.  In this sea of characters, Gordon never loses focus.

            That’s not say that Gordon makes his story into something that it’s not.  He doesn’t push the seriousness too far, always reminding us that the stakes aren’t really that high.  After all, it’s just video games, and it’s just Donkey Kong.  That knowledge makes the whole thing seem a bit silly at times, watching adults scramble and back-stab over such a small thing.  Gordon remembers to mine that for some laughs, but it also reveals an inherent truth at the center of the story:  Some people will do anything for a win, and in their monopolizing, other, less fortunate folks are left to pick from the scraps.

            I hope I haven’t lost you with the reveal that they’re battling over Donkey Kong.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve raved about this movie only to have people’s eyes glaze over the instant they hear those words.  You don’t have to be a gamer (I’m not) or know anything about classic games (I don’t) to understand this story.  You just have to understand defeat and disappoint, and the longing for a win.

            Other Notes:

Ø  You wonder if Billy’s lost an edge, not just in his game playing skill, but in his ability to manipulate and control people.  He never wins over Gordon, and even some of his own herd starts to stray.

Ø  I love the music they used.  It’s another way of knowing that Gordon understood the story he was telling.

Ø  DDG is Drop Dead Gorgeous, if you don’t know.