The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007), directed by Seth Gordon

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Donkey Kong Rap", by Grant Kirkhope

       These days video games are a pretty big deal. They’ve got their own conventions and trade shows, people make thousands of dollars screaming at them on youtube, and  games like Starcraft and League of Legends are even placed on a level approaching soccer and baseball with managers and corporate sponsors (although they all seem equally tiresome to attempt watching).  Back in the day however, when games came in boxes the size of refrigerators and Super Mario Brothers: The Movie was still a twinkle in Shigeru Miyamoto’s eye, video games were the domain of hobbyists (ie nerds) and especially the concept of competitive gaming, which at the time centered around high scores. The media at the time certainly didn’t give a shit, so if you were able to get them to say you the greatest at Pac-Man or Tapper, then that was what you were. There was no proper oversight committee, no real verification process, it was a wild frontier where some could craft whatever image of themselves that they wanted. Which some did.

And then later some folks made a movie about it.

On its surface The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a movie about video games. The arcade classics to be precise, Galaga, Space Invaders, Centipede, and of course Donkey Kong. At its heart though, it’s about two men who play arcade games. On one side is Billy Mitchell, a man who at 17 got 825,000 points in Donkey Kong, then the world record, and transitioned it into the most minor of celebrity status. On the other is Steve Wiebe; Former student, family man, school teacher, and a man who managed to film himself not only breaking Billy’s 22 year old record but scoring over one million points in one game. This naturally draws the attention of the competitive arcade gaming community, and that of King Geek himself Billy Mitchell, who’s none too happy about it. Lies, conspiracies and controversies abound as Steve Wiebe struggles to reach the mountaintop, kept at bay at every turn by the machinations  of Billy Mitchell, for about the lowest possible stakes you can imagine. By the end of this film, you will believe a portly Italian man with a mustache can jump.

Perhaps I’ve watched too much Trailer Park Boys or Parks & Recreation in my time, but watching The King of Kong there’s this intense atmosphere of surreality that exudes from it. I mean you’ll see the constant upselling of arcade games like they’re high art, or watch people behaving like blatantly petty sycophants, hear the by 2019 standards stereotypically cheezy soundtrack (including Eye of the Tiger obviously) or just listen to Billy for about two seconds and it’s easy to forget that these are actual people and not Seth Gordon trying to rip off The Office. Even ol’ Wiebe, our audience surrogate, seems to be the universe’s punching bag in a way not entirely unlike your typical Brit-comedy protagonist. The utter lack of self-awareness brings to mind another popular documentary film of the era, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat, although not nearly as crude or  racist. Although the competitive arcade gaming community isn’t exactly the most diverse in the world either, going off of this film.

Of course, the primary reason one might want to watch A Fistful of Quarters is the reason why you wouldn’t bother: Billy Mitchell. Everything about this guy seems to have been constructed in a lab to be as unlikable as humanly possible. From his hang-dog cromagnon features, his tacky ties, to his tone deaf narcissism as he strokes his ego or puts down others, it goes beyond the common ‘love to hate him’ dynamic that we’re all familiar with and steps into ‘actually fuck this guy’. That it was eventually revealed years after the release of this film that Mitchell cheated should come as no surprise, because throughout the entirety of The King of Kong he is painted as a man of supreme cowardice, who has built up an army of unquestioning bootlickers in order to protect his fragile ego. That this film didn’t end with Steven Wiebe saying ‘fuck Donkey Kong’ and deciding to stomp Mitchell’s giant bearded face into the pavement after all the shit he was put through is its greatest tragedy.

If you’ve seen Borat or Waiting for Guffman and you’ve been hungry for some more of that kind of insular weirdness, of if you’ve got this sick wish to see if Billy Mitchell really is as shitty as I’m building him up to be, then The King of Kong might scratch that itch for you. With arcades being more or less nonexistent in the U.S. these days and the turn of the 21st century technology on display you could even see it as something of a nostalgia trip movie for these modern times. However it’s also on the far side of anything really dramatic, and even for a 90 minute film it feels like the filmmakers are forced to pad things out to keep you from noticing that barely anything is going on. In some ways I suppose that increases that surreal atmosphere I mentioned earlier, yet as with the other documentaries I’ve reviewed in the past I feel as if I’m at a loss for anything more to say. Avoid the barrels if you can, avoid the movie if you want.