This Kong Really is King

For a documentary concerning itself with the fortunes of a Redmond, Washington science teacher and former Boeing engineer obsessed with breaking the world record on Donkey Kong, darn it all if Seth Gordon’s King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters isn’t one of the giddiest good times I’ve had all year. The film is monstrously entertaining, it’s final image so cathartic and wondrous I wanted to stand up from my seat and cheer. 

Steve Weibe and his son in Picturehouse's King of Kong

And who’d have thought it? I mean, you tell me but personally I think the idea of watching a rather sad-sack hero named Steve Weibe obsessively-compulsively go from one end of the country to the other in order to break a record established 1982 sounds more than a tad silly. I mean, I enjoy video games as much as the next geeky girl out there but even for me sitting at home and reading the synopsis this reeked of being more than a tad absurd.

Trust me, it’s not. Gordon’s picture has the aforementioned hero (a stereotypical nice guy with lots of talent who’d rather not put up a fight when faced with adversity finally taking a stand for himself and trying to deal with the pressure said stand brings), a gigantic monolithic roadblock (Twin Galaxies, the organization responsible for keeping and tracking all video game records and doing so with an almost maniacal glee) and – most importantly – a larger than life villain (Billy Mitchell, one of the founders of Twin Galaxies, considered the Jedi Master of gamers, holder of the Donkey Kong record for over two decades and not above protecting said record with an almost Machiavellian glee). It also has a human angle that’s truly inspiring, its final universal sports metaphor (and life truth) about winning absolutely sublime.

Okay, so that final revelation is also a little bit of a cliché, but anyone who has ever taken part in any sort of competition knows firsthand sometimes the silliest clichés are also the best ones of them all. That’s certainly the case here, watching Weibe wake up from an almost catatonic slumber to become the teacher, husband, father and, yes, winner he seemingly was always meant to be joyously fantastic.

This movie isn’t about Donkey Kong or million point barriers or Jerry Bruckheimer-looking bad guys or breaking Guinness records. No, it is about rediscovering passion, about finding self-confidence, about realizing the best things in your life are the ones you sometimes take for granted. It is about life and about the living of it to the very fullest, something that doesn’t necessarily take money or titles or flashy clothes or big-breasted wives or records which will seemingly never be broken. It is, most of all, about the glory of being yourself and about the ability to be perfectly okay with that, sentiments and emotions I’m almost 100-percent positive most of us in our own daily lives unfortunately very rarely have the ability to emulate.

So, with all that said I think everyone from ages six to sixty to six-hundred-sixty should drop everything and go see this motion picture. I’m not going to give any more information, tell you little tidbits about the other eccentrics Gordon profiles or give a list of my favorite highlights. I’m just going to smile, keep my mouth shut and gently try and push you out the door.

Seriously.

I’m not playing a game.

Stop reading.

I mean it.

King of Kong is that good. 

I suggest you leave for the theater now.

Film Rating:  êêê1/2  (out of 4)

Additonal Links

-  King of Kong Theatrical Trailer