The King of Kong

2007, USA

Director: Seth Gordon

Writer: Seth Gordon

Cast: Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, Walter Day

Producers: Ed Cunningham

Genre: Documentary

Distributor: Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm

Running Time: 79 minutes

Website: http://www.billyvssteve.com

To say this is the greatest film of all time would be a lie. After all, it doesn’t star Bruce Campbell, which puts it out of the running almost immediately, nor does it feature dead-eyed porn star Gauge, which is the other criterion that gets a film played over and over again in my house. But it does involve competitive Donkey Kong, and has drastic emotional highs and lows that almost made me forget that I’m so dead inside that I open most reviews with references to hard-core pornography.

So, without bothering to rank The King Of Kong amongst the AFI’s 100 Best Films or the AVN Best of 2007, suffice it say that Seth Gordon’s documentary is excellent. And that’s because the film, unlike most recent documentaries, focuses on constructing a story instead of flashy editing or polemics. Unemployed father Steve Wiebe is a damn fine Donkey Kong player. And when, in a moment of idle Internet surfing, he discovers a website which has posted the world record Donkey Kong score, he finds a new mission in life. And so, he embarks upon a quest to break that record from his home machine, with a strange combination of passivity and determination. But to do so, he must overcome a somewhat exclusive and standoffish judging panel, a bemused but increasingly exasperated wife, and, worst of all, Billy Mitchell, current Donkey Kong record holder and insufferable ass. Weibe is a perfect hero, likable but flawed, and Mitchell is the perfect villain, rich, arrogant, and with a beard/hair combo that references early 90s Danzig as well as a mobile home community. The film is constructed nearly perfectly, with peaks and valleys in the narrative, and an unobtrusive filmmaking team that reminds the viewer that there was a time before Michael Moore, where documentary directors didn’t need to stand in front of the camera quite so much. So, while The King Of Kong may not be the greatest film of all time, it might be one of the best documentaries in recent memory.

Rating: 9 on 10

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