I’ve already mentioned The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, but it’s really worth repeating, the charms of this humorous and involving, to-scale documentary from Seth Gordon. The film centers on family man and middle-school science teacher Steve Wiebe (above right), who’s the
upstart hero of the piece, about the
battle for the Guinness Book of World Records-recognized high score on
Donkey Kong, generally regarded as the most difficult classic arcade
videogame.

Wiebe is a straightforward, earnest guy who bests the long-standing record
for Kong and submits his accomplishment via videotape to a recognized governing body of videogame history and minutiae.
But the old record-holder — a crafty, smirking, self-proclaimed Jedi
Master of gaming turned hot-sauce mogul named Billy Mitchell — doesn’t
plan on going quietly into the night. Protecting his name and record,
he unleashes a fascinating scheme of proxy psychological warfare that
dredges up old grudges between now-adult arcade opponents.

The King of Kong is in equal measure about intrapersonal competition, rivalry
and compulsive obsession, and it’s for this reason that the project has already been tapped, à la
skateboarding documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, to be made into a
narrative feature. Though on the surface it sounds wonkish and severely
limited by its subject matter, it’s actually anything but. Director-editor Gordon really knows the value of contrasting and incidental footage (read: letting
characters hang themselves with their own words), and as such The King of Kong
achieves pleasingly squirmy moments of slack-jawed recognition, as well
as some surprisingly affecting beats. The lesson learned, once again?
Life is still high school, just writ large. For the original capsule review, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down.