From the opening blips and squeaks spewing forth from the retro game machines to your first viewing of the movie’s villain Billy Mitchell and his ego-maniacal delusions of grandeur - the first words that will come to mind are… “Are these people for real?” ‘King of Kong’ is the true story (honest!) of the battle to attain the world-record Donkey Kong high-score. You heard right. There’s people out there who really, really care about this stuff to the point where absolutely nothing else matters. God damn, we are witnessing the decline of Western Civilization before our very eyes and boy is it funny!
So what’s it all about then? Well, back in the 80’s, the aforementioned Billy Mitchell - who looks like a cross between Kenny Loggins and Nick Cave had set the world-record score for Donkey Kong. This record remained uncontested for years and years but in 2006 the film’s hero Steve Weibe breaks the high-score but his submission is denied by the official gaming commission (yeah, you read that right!) because Weibe racked up the points on a home based console. The only way the score can stand is that if it is completed inside a ‘Funland’ location. Yet, they commission quite easily accepts Mitchell’s video-taped record.
And this is where the lunacy really kicks off where we see a middle-school science teacher (Weibe) and a hot sauce mogul and (Mitchell) vie for the Guinness World Record on the arcade classic, Donkey Kong.
Insane! Stupid! Moronic! But friggn hilarious at the same time! This is… the doco of the year! No contest!
Check out the trailer here.
(Thank you to Penny Modra and all at Threethousand for the passes)
I want to see this pretty bad, just to see how egotistical Billy Mitchell really is.
Billy Mitchell is a man among men, how dare you mock his greatness.