You've GOT to see this! Man, this is an awesome film! A kickass craft + competition documentary with some amazing personalities and a surprisingly gripping story. Look for it at your local arthouse theater, put it on your Netflix queue, but do *not* go googling for the personalities or details of the events covered by the film. You will want to watch them unfold without knowing the twists and turns in store. Trust me.I saw the 7.15 show tonight at the Brattle and the packed room was totally into the ups and downs of the film, punctuating all the key moments with the appropriate groans, hisses, laughs, applause, and even fist-pumping cheers. I gotta say, this is a perfect example of the theater environment enhancing the movie experience. After the film, I caught Ned outside with some Brattle/indie regulars, and one of them mentioned that she caught the woman seated next to her crying at one point.
This, at a movie ostensibly focused on getting high scores on an arcade game from the 80s! Wonderful stuff! =)
The AIR GUITAR NATION of classic video gaming!
Right, I haven't actually explained that part yet, did I? I'm a little overly tired right now, pardon me. So, the movie introduces us to this brotherhood of sorts. A collection of personalities who made their mark in the 80s by setting national, if not world, records with high scores on the most popular arcade games of the times, including Donkey Kong. They were teenagers then, but 20 years later, we find that gaming is still a cornerstone of their day-to-day. Some have parlayed their unusual notoriety into business opporunities while others continue to pursue higher and higher scores to this day. One arcade game wunderkind, Billy Mitchell, set a high score record for Kong that stood unchallenged for 20 years. It was considered unbeatable. Enter downsized hobby gamer with an obsessive nature, Steve Wiebe. On an arcade version of Kong in his garage, he breaks the supposedly unbeatable record! When he sends in a videotape record of his feat (including some unplanned offscreen... umm... antics, you might say, by his son Derek =), the classic video gaming authority, Twin Galaxies, has its doubts. When their "referees" start looking into the details, of Wiebe's hardware, and then his known associates, an almost unbelievable web of suspicion and collusion among the record-holding gamers and their referee authorities is revealed. Who can be trusted to provide legitimate proof of a record breaking high score? More importantly, who can be trusted to rule on it? When the Guinness Book wants an authoritative declaration, it can only be settled in a public forum, a video game showdown to learn who has truly earned the title, King of Kong.
Steve Wiebe is such a great outsider good guy, someone who deserves to be recognized purely on merit. However, the world of classic gaming is much dirtier and clique-ier than anyone could have imagined, and Billy Mitchell, insider leader and gamer hero/poster boy can't just sit back and let an upstart nobody knocking his initials down the leaderboard. I don't know what kind of release this film will be getting, but I hope it at least makes the artsy/indie rounds. You do not have to have dropped thousands of quarters into Donkey Kong to get this film. It's remarkable drama, and so much more than just two guys playing arcade games.
Some *SPOILERy* highlights...
Wiebe packs up his family for a trip to Florida, where he will attempt to set an official Guinness World record high score for Donkey Kong. In the car, his daughter tells him she didn't realize that the Guinness Book was such a big deal. He tells her that it is, enough so that people all over the world try some crazy things to get into the book. His daughter than observes, "I think some people even ruin their lives to get in it."
Out of the mouths of babes.
Man, the mulletted Mitchell stepped out of an 80s high school outsider-makes-good film. The jerkass tough guy-slash-cool kid. He surrounds himself—at least within the classic gamer community—with acolytes and minions. When Wiebe begins to make a splash, it's these friends of his who create static about the legitimacy of his claims. And when Steve steps up to perform live, at an arcade and established official gamers' forum, they all but actually heckle him while he plays. This one guy, Kuh, talks to the camera while Wiebe is on a record-breaking run, explaining how well he's doing, but at the same time, always hedging with a remark here and there about all the things that can go wrong. It's just amazing how obvious of a tool he is.
Y'know, in my head, the comparisons of this documentary to actual 80s movies just keep on comin, particularly the ones that center around a competition or sport. They even chose the appropriate songs from ROCKY films for several sequences of the documentary. Good crack!
It really is a real-life KARATE KID for Donkey Kong. No real Mr. Miyagi that I could single out, but plotwise, well, in the end, even the Cobra Kai sinsei's star pupils hafta give Danny his due and their respect. At the end of KONG, Wiebe's straight shooting and earnest attitude and good nature win over more than a few of the gamer insiders.
Something like that.
Man, I really want to play some old-school Donkey Kong now and impress some sweet DDG babes. =)
Click here for some random DK fun collected by Jeff.
Keep on keepin on~
p.s. There's a sweet cameo by Q-bert. =)
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