Starring Steve Wiebe, Billy Mitchell
Score: 10 out of 10
In 1982, a teen named Billy Mitchell earned the highest score ever in the video game Donkey Kong.
In 2005, Steve Wiebe, a recently laid-off Boeing engineer, took the title via videotape from his garage in Redmond, Washington.
And, thus, begins The King of Kong: a truly wonderful, touching and unexpected documentary.
It's that videotape--the one Wiebe used to present his high score to Twin Galaxies, the governing body of such things--that drives Kong. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. You need to meet Billy and Steve. This is their story and they are the story.
You know those guys who sit around talking about the "good ol' days"? The ones who think that just because, say, they caught the game-winning pass in high school that they, somehow, are the best today? That's Billy Mitchell. Not to say he hasn't done anything with his life: he's the owner of Rickey's Hot Sauce and seems to do quite well for himself. Granted, he doesn't look like he's bought new clothes since 1987 and has a well-coiffed 'do the leader of a hair band would covet. Oh yeah, and he's a douchebag. I usually like to be more nuanced in my descriptions, but, no. He's just a douchebag.
The Yin to Mitchell's douche-y Yang is Steve Wiebe. A family man who lost his job on the day he and his wife signed the papers on a new home (Off-topic: I had something sort of similar happen to me and I can tell you--it sucks.), Wiebe is quiet and driven. He takes up Donkey Kong in his increased spare time determined to be maybe not the best, but, at least, as good as he can be. See, Wiebe is the kind of guy who's pretty good at a bunch of stuff, but has never been really great at one thing. Using his engineering skills (not to mention the hand-eye coordination he picked up as a drummer) Donkey Kong gives him his shot.
I can't say much more about the film's story without giving it all away, but suffice to say, The King of Kong unfolds as a slow-burning battle between two men who want to be the best at, of all things, an almost 40-year-old video game. Yes, it's all kinds of geeky, but the doc is shot in such a way that it becomes a real story with heroes and villains (guess which one Mitchell is? BTW--the director of the film says Billy-boy is a way bigger prick than is shown in the film).
Wiebe just wants his shot; his chance to prove he can be the best. It's impossible not to root for the down-on-his-luck engineer (who turns science teacher during the course of the film) who doggedly pursues his dream, traveling across the country to confront the naysayers and go joystick-to-joystick with Mitchell.
Mitchell is scared of being de-throned. That's the only explanation I can come up with for his behavior. This is a man who has built his life, his reputation on this one moment so much so that his friends and his parents--despite the fact that he owns a successful business--hold his Donkey Kong record up as his crowning achievement. It's sort of heartbreaking really. Not enough for me to excuse Mitchell's antics, but enough to make me go from cringing to yelling to, finally, just feeling sorry for the guy whenever he came on screen.
The King of Kong is an excellent little documentary. No matter how you feel about video games and the people who play them (and all the possible stereotypes and quirks are on display here), it's impossible not to get sucked into The King of Kong; into the battle for supremacy that has taken over the lives of two very dedicated men.
