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A Donkey Kong ‘addict’ gets his fix of the computer game |
Camden cinema | King of Kong movie review| Donkey Kong computer game addiction | Original documentary
KING OF KONG
Directed by Seth Gordon
Certificate PG
“I DO not drink or do drugs,” states the pallid, glaze-eyed thirtysomething with trembling hands.
“I play video games, and that is a far better addiction.”
After watching King of Kong, a documentary about a group of men whose lives have been dedicated to beating their high scores on the arcade game Donkey Kong, you may disagree.
The premise of the film is not just an investigation into why any right-minded person would want to play an arcade game for hours on end, but what makes a “gamer”.
The brains of these geeks seem to be wired slightly differently from the rest of the world: all have absurd manual dexterity – brilliant at other disciplines, such as the piano. Others are oddballs who needed something to keep themselves occupied through a long and lonely adolescence. Some, it is suggested, have a form of autism which heightens their ability to remember what happens next in these computer games.
This is a bizarre documentary on a bizarre subject, tracking the fortunes of world champ Billy Mitchell and the pretender to his crown, Steve Weibe. Weibe wants to compete against Mitchell in front of a crowd. Mitchell, who holds the title of world’s greatest Donkey Kong player with a score of 1,047,200, isn’t so keen.
The film is littered with superb talking heads: these people believe how many points you can rack up on an arcade game is a serious matter. “When you play a computer game, it’s meant to be fun,” says one. “But when you want to write your name in history books, it’s a different matter altogether.” Cue violent stare.
Such vignettes are told in a way that is not condescending à la Louis Theroux. Instead we learn the story behind a global craze: the birth of the computer gaming industry, a product of the brilliance of late 20th-century science.
Other parts are dumbed-down comedy. Weibe, a high school science teacher, aims to beat the world record. He has an arcade game in his garage and as he racks up a score of nearly a million points – a brain-aching, hand-numbing achievement which takes the best part of the day.
It’s all captured on the camera which runs to ensure the high score can be sent to the arcade games version of the FA.
Such odd moments litter this original documentary. |
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