Gamertell

Title: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Price: $27.95
Genre(s): Documentary
Release Date: January 29, 2008
Publisher(s): NewLine, Picturehouse
Rating: PG-13
Pros: A quirky, funny and often dramatic look into the world of classic arcade competitions and the quest to keep and/or conquer Donkey Kong. A movie even non-gamers will love.
Cons: The idiotic second commentary track.
Score: 9.5/10

While watching the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, expect to experience a strange sense of absurdity from the start. After all, a movie about grown men going battling over the same world record of an old arcade game doesn’t seem intrinsically exciting.

The movie center’s around Steve Weibe’s (pronounced WEE-BEE) attempt to break the long-standing world record for the 1980s arcade game, Donkey Kong, held by Bill Mitchell. Along the way there are several attempts to beat Mitchell’s high score, all while having to overcome decades of nearly fanatical dedication to Mitchell and his old scores.

About 15 minutes into the movie and you begin to know enough about the main people to actually become engrossed in their personal quests. Forget that this is about an arcade game. As Donkey Kong record hopeful Wiebe simply states late in the movie, this stopped being about the game long ago.

As stories and personalities unfold, you get a sense that not only are a few people hanging on a bit to hard and long to their old arcade game high scores and fame from the 1980s, but they are also a bit trapped in that decade. In particular, the movie’s other main character, Mitchell, becomes a near caricature of a stuck-in-time gamer: a bit cocky, holding on to old scores and not quite caught up to modern fashions.

On the other side is your average nice guy, Wiebe, who simply decides to get the high score on a game he pretty much perfected in college and regain some of the confidence that has been destroyed by a lifetime of seemingly second place accomplishments. Little does he know when he starts out that such a basic form of greatness is filled with unimaginable politics, personality conflicts and serious score keeping.

Being a DVD release, this comes with tons of extra footage not show in the movie including segments taken from post-release conventions and appearance by the filmmakers and Wiebe (Mitchell is noticeably absent, which also become a comical theme in the film). There are also extended interviews, a few of which are reactions to the film and others are additional footage simply not used in the movie pieced together into mini documentaries about the movie’s other key characters. Even so, it still only skims the surface of more than 400 hours of collected footage to make the movie. Definitely check out Steve Sanders’ (long-time fried of Mitchel) extended interview as well some extra songs by Walter Day (head referee and TwinGalaxies founder) and Wiebe.

Some of the best extras are the quick, adorably animated history of the Donkey Kong arcade game and a better look into the Wall of Fame at the FunLand arcade where the records achieved there are memorialized with 8 x 10 photos of each person by the unit they conquered. You’ll even be treated to a short look at the I Am 8-Bit art exhibit, concentrating on Donkey Kong art, of course.

It’s often hard for me to sit through - let alone recommend - feature-length commentaries but the first one includes folks (director Seth Gordon, producer Ed Cunningham and associate producers J. Clay Tweel and Luis Lopez) who have plenty to say and add to the film. You find out even more about each of the gamers, when many of the scenes were shot, how they acquired so much great footage and even a couple drinking games you can enjoy throughout the movie. It’s not filled with the usual dull tones of a Hollywood director trying rambling on like a bad college lecture and dropping names as much as a room full of guys adding actual facts and better background than could be portrayed in the film.

The other commentary (by Entertainment Editorial Director of IGN, Chris Carle, and the founder of I Am 8-Bit, Jon M. Gibson), however, is entirely skipable. It’s just two guys sometimes chatting about arcade games, babbling about their memories and poking fun of the people on screen. Although slightly interesting to a few people, they really don’t say anything useful, informational, insightful or even funny. I’m guessing they were either easy to get or friends of the filmmakers. The best part is that they downed a shot of Rickey’s hot sauce, which means they endured some pain for their efforts after recording the commentary.

While the movie/DVD may appear to many as a documentary about a classic arcade game and only appeal to a small segment of fans, it is ultimately a funny, emotional, quirky and realistically dramatic/comedic movie that anyone will enjoy.

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