King of Kong

King of Kong came out this weekend and will be gradually hitting more cities. I saw this movie back in March at the AFI Dallas Film Festival and have been excited about its release ever since. It’s about the fight between two guys to be Donkey Kong world champion. I have been trying my hardest to get people to make this one of the five movies they see in the theater this year.

I suppose there is a formula to documentary filmmaking where you find a subculture, look for some kind of competitive angle and then film it to its conclusion. Okie Noodling did this with people who catch catfish using their fists. Pucker Up! did this for competitive whistling. There are a number of them that involve word games: spelling, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, etc. But some of those documentaries ignore the path blazed by earlier subculture documentaries like Crumb. A lot of what makes Crumb work is the interpersonal dynamics, not any competitive drive to be the best underground comic creator. You can even see the same structure at work in a narrative movie like Little Miss Sunshine.

Which is why I so thoroughly enjoyed in King of Kong. It captures the competition and the interpersonal relationships. It covers Billy and Steve’s relationships with the people around them, beyond just what they think of their gaming skills. The filmmaker does an excellent job getting these people to talk like the camera isn’t there. While that might make a good documentary it wouldn’t be half as entertaining without Billy’s outsized persona. He wears ties with the US flag on them. He talks about himself in the third person. He frames the passion of competitive gaming in terms of the abortion debate. At times the feud is so big I felt like I was watching the Trojan War unfold. Billy is the unbeatable Achilles and Steve is the reluctant warrior Hector. It’s also edited together very well to keep the story twisting and pumping along to the showdown.

Afterwards you can ruminate on the allegorical examination of American culture, aging male nostalgia for childhood, absolute truth and how to find happiness in a culture that says happiness is reserved for children. But while you’re watching, and for the 10-15 minutes immediately after its over, you’ll feel excited, amused, and charmed in a way that you haven’t been most of the year.