Remember the kid with the mullet from third grade that always wore that Dungeons and Dragons T-shirt? He usually spent the day planning his Sonic the Hedgehog strategy. Well, he's still around, and he's still just as "different."
Seth Gordon's documentary The King of Kong (mostly) chronicles affable George Allen look-alike Steve Wiebe as he strives to prove his Donkey Kong prowess. Unfortunately, he faces a skeptical community of gamers, who champion Billy Mitchell, Chuck Norris-wannabe and current world record-holder for DK on Intellivision. The film attempts to follow in the stylistic footsteps of some of the more recent breakthrough documentaries like Spellbound and Word Play. It shares the same M.O.: Present a niche hobby and dissect some of its nuances, introduce a few of its quirky, talented practitioners, and then watch as they engage each other in a battle royale.
However, The King of Kong is less successful in adapting this increasingly modular documentary format to its subject. The "characters" in this film, though amusing in their geekery, are (save for Wiebe) deprived of proper analysis and, as a result, become stereotypes. Ultimately, the anticipated showdown between Wiebe and Mitchell is disappointingly anticlimactic and, considering that portions of the film seem to have been staged, one wonders what Gordon was trying to achieve in the first place. Though the film is watchable enough, go to the arcade instead - at least there one can make fun of the gamer nerds to their faces.
