The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters

One of the summer’s most splendid, utterly enjoyable surprises is this arcade gamer documentary about hardcore competitive Donkey Kong players and the strange, intense subculture they occupy. Imagine a world where achieving a world record Donkey Kong score supersedes all other goals in the scale of importance, a world where a long-haired gamer prodigy named Billy Mitchell is elected as the makeshift messiah of the classic arcade game realm and very seriously delivers lines like “Whenever I say something, it’s controversial. It’s a lot like the abortion issue” straight-faced into the camera. Such is the world of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a fun and very funny feature from director Seth Gordon that plays an awful lot like a narrative comedy for something based on actual people. Imagine a Christopher Guest mockumentary in which all the outlandish, self-serious antics were completely and utterly real. The movie even has those little Guest-esque touches that make his work seem so truly awkward: Mitchell markets his own brand of hot sauce on the side and boasts that it is as perfect as everything else in his life; Walter Day, gamer referee and head of the official arcade game scorekeeping organization, Twin Galaxies, proudly proclaims music to be his true passion before launching into a remarkably awful folk song while wearing a fluffy winter coat in the middle of a field somewhere. It’s hard to draw the line here between what’s being utilized as comedy material and what’s being addressed as a serious matter of study. The result is a film that blurs the lines between narrative comedy and documentary, depicting very relatable characters, establishing a clear villain in cruel Kong maestro Mitchell, and even counting down the days to the big final showdown much like a typical sports comedy would. It’s a film that manages to convey a lot of information to its audience about the often unrecognized world of gaming while still functioning as a perfectly calibrated storytelling vehicle.

At its core, this is an underdog story about a down on his luck husband and father of two named Steve Wiebe who, through entirely self-taught technique, logs a controversial Donkey Kong score that eclipses the presumed unbreakable record of Twin Galaxies all-star Billy Mitchell. Soon a full on investigation is launched into Wiebe’s credibility and he’s forced to surrender his title under allegations that he may have been using a machine that had been tampered with. He sets out, quite atypically for the reserved and humble Wiebe, on a mission to directly disprove any claims that call into question his integrity and officially beat Billy Mitchell for all the gaming world to see. Mitchell’s smug demeanor only makes him all the more unlikable and despite having many minions who willingly aid him in trying to deflect Wiebe’s claims, his deplorable behavior toward his challenger seems to cut them each off one by one. In some ways it’s something of a political thriller in which a puppet regime squashes a worthy uprising only to find sympathizers within their midst. It’s a fascinating world of social climbing and slick internal exchanges, a classic “one man vs. the big machine” story set in a highly original and entertaining new world.


Grade: A