Got a quarter?

Video game docu-masterpiece reaches highest level

William O’Donnell staff

Seth Gordon’s documentary is a compelling and frequently hilarious following of two competitive video game titans doing their best to not get “chumpatized” as they (almost directly) battle for the world-record high score in the original arcade version of Donkey Kong, which dates back to 1981. Had this film been fictional, I would still have considered it a supremely well-crafted film. The characters are better than fiction, the events are dramatic beyond anything one might anticipate from a film about classic video games, and it evokes both fits of laughter, as well as heartfelt emotion from the audience.

The first highlighted of the two main contenders is the reigning champion Billy Mitchell, who set the original record in ’82 and has lived as a gaming “celebrity” for years. Billy appears like a sort of comic villain that comes only from endless hours of carefully calculated creation in a writer’s mind, except he’s as real as anyone. Billy, dressed in all black save for very “loud ’n’ proud” USA ties, is seen most often in a power stance with an expression that seems to say “I really want to impress you with what I’m about to say . . . that’s why it’s taking me so long to say it.” Billy’s arrogance and handling of his screen time often reminded me of David Brent from BBC’s The Office series. His lack of self-awareness is masked only by his extremely comical pride — the way he rallied minions, showed off his well-endowed wife (for lack of a more sensitive term) or his hot sauce chain, began and ended most all of his sentences with a praising of his own life, or even the way he combed back his hair; it is amusing nearly to the point of shocking how much of a “character” he turns out to be.

The challenger is good-guy Steve Wiebe (pronounced “wee-bee”). Wiebe is talented by many means but always falling short of complete success. Steve is the sort of protagonist an audience loves to love because he not only lives the life of a perfect family man but that of a hero who never wants to give up and is willing to push in order to find recognition for at least one thing in his life (this so happens to be a record in Donkey Kong). He trains for hours in his garage despite his life struggles and soon brings the match to the public eye.

Again, I am tempted to say how well-crafted the writing was, if only it existed, when I tell you about the series of dramatic events that occur. Tapes of record-breakings travel from party to party and both the suspense and tensions over the games are matched only by the controversies, as the gaming “referees” have to decide a champion by the deadline set by the people at Guinness World Records. The audience is brought to the edge of their seats as Steve travels across the country to respected arcades to prove he is the true champion in front of an audience (a couple of times).

Steve clearly has his own sense of pride, but his wounded mien overshadows this as he gets sucked into the competitive gaming world. Surrounded by gaming professionals who epitomize the term “awkward,” Steve wishes to compete man-to-man so that he may find honour in either victory or defeat. Billy never accepts the challenge, which makes the story become that of one man’s struggle up an eig-bit mountain instead of a climactic battle of two gladiators.

The film seems aware of the relative triviality of playing Donkey Kong competitively, and marks this with satirical use of ’80s music that normally might be found scoring a Rocky film. The audience is pulled past said sense of triviality and through moments of tears, anger, deceit, and craftiness to reveal one character who may be successful, but ultimately hollow, and another who, win or lose, has a good soul and gives an example of how anyone can be a winner (you see? A film about Donkey Kong made me sentimental . . . surely that must mean something). This is an unlikely gem of a film that I strongly recommend.

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters plays at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at the Cinematheque until Jan. 17.