King of Kong is a testament to really film in general, in that you can make any story fascinating no matter what it is about. The film focuses on two men playing for the high score of Donkey Kong, that's it, and it couldn't be more entertaining. Now again this is in the whole lies of the documentary form, which I'm not going to get into again here. It is once more though this brilliant construction of a story, worthy of a fictional narrative (which in some ways it is), of a classic underdog story. We follow the outside average man Steve Wiebe as he tries to get his high score against the villainous Billy Mitchell, who seems to even dress to play the part of an villain of an 80's sports movie, who holds sway among the top brass of the video high score community known as Twin Galaxies. That all sounds potentially ridiculous, and perhaps it is, but what a compelling story it tells as the film not only crafts so well this rivalry of personalities through game playing, but also in its vibrant exploration of the world that surrounds that rather specific obsession. The film works as it really paints itself mostly with this broader stroke of the "inspirational sports movie" right down to the musical motifs it uses, however it does balance itself well by garnering enough substance within the pointed interviews, or in Billy Mitchell's case villainous monologues. Is this film all true, hardly, it is a crafted narrative just as a film is, however as a crafted narrative it is a wildly entertaining and interesting one.
5/5
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