Movie Review: The King of Kong

Disclaimer: Apparently, there is a lot of controversy surrounding this movie. From misstated facts to records not being recognized, the twenty people who care about the Donkey Kong high score record have lambasted the movie for its errors. You can do a google or yahoo search about this movie and will find countless posts about the upper echelon of people from twingalaxies.com (the people who keep the scores) refuting the story in the King of Kong. With that being said, I don’t care.

The movie is your classic David vs. Goliath matchup. Steve Wiebe, a Washington science teacher who is obsessed with being the best at something, plays the part of David. Billy Mitchell (pictured right) is supposed to be Goliath but ends up playing the role of Alamaba’s Randy Owen (pictured left). Billy Mitchell is the reigning Donkey Kong champion and is quite possibly one of the biggest pricks in the gaming community. I also have a sneaky suspicion that Billy Mitchell is the one man that keeps Aqua Net in business.

The movie features twingalaxies.com, the official video game scorekeepers. The twingalaxies.com crew obviously worships the ground that Billy Mitchell walks on and continues to undermine Steve’s efforts throughout the movie.

Steve ends up breaking Billy Mitchell’s record in his garage. He sent his tape to the twingalaxies.com headquarters which is located in Walter Day’s apartment. Walter Day (pictured right with the dufus referee shirt on) is the “official” referee of the twingalaxies.com crew and a “budding musician.”

Walter then hands the tape over to Robert T Mruczek (pictured left), Christopher Lloyd’s lovechild. Mruczek’s apartment doubles as the official video review room for twingalaxies.com. It must be noted that Mruzcek has a very impressive collection of empty pizza boxes in his apartment. It must smell like cheese whiz in there.

Steve is first awarded the high score. The twingalaxies.com crew along with their idol, Billy “High Cotton” Mitchell, finds a way to negate the score. Unfortunately, Steve is associated with some guy named Mr. Awesome who is the high score record holder for Missile Command. Fifteen years earlier, Billy “Pantene Pro V” Mitchell and Mr. Awesome had a dispute over who got the last bite of a banana split they shared at a bowling alley. Since then, Mr. Awesome has been the black sheep of the classic video game competition world.

Steve’s high score is invalidated because of his association with Mr. Awesome and suspicions that his Donkey Kong kiosk wasn’t an official one. Steve has no other choice but to go to Funland and prove to everybody in the gaming world that he is the real deal and does indeed have a respectable job.

He travels to Funland only to receive a cold reception. Billy Mitchell has cronies everywhere. We are introduced to another of Billy’s cronies, Brian Kuh (i.e. Grimace - the guy pictured to the left). Brian worships the ground that Mitchell walks on.

Brian tries to break Steve’s concentration by farting around the arcade and loudly shouting that a kill screen is calling. Brian also calls Mitchell (who is sitting on his grandmother’s couch) several times throughout the evening. Another of Mitchell’s friends, Steve Sanders, seems to be the only decent guy in Mitchell’s crew (more on that later). Throughout the movie, Sanders is very cool with Steve.

Steve ends up breaking the score. Walter reluctantly acknowledges it. Brian almost has a heart attack. It was if somebody pissed all over Brian’s Dungeons & Dragons character sheet and threw his favorite 20 sided die in the toilet.

Brian then informs the impartial twingalaxies.com to his “cabin” for, you guessed it, pizza. Mitchell calls Brian at his cabin where everybody is enjoying pizza, soda, and probably large amounts of flatulence. Mitchell informs Walter that he has something special for him, but Brian has it.

Brian then produces a Mitchell video tape which causes Walter Day to explode with shear joy and almost causing Walter to wet his pants. The video tape shows Mitchell breaking 1,000,000 on Donkey Kong. A funny part happens here as Brian stands triumphantly giving a play by play of the Funspot happenings while on the phone with Billy Mitchell.

Walter Day has an orgasm on camera and calls Billy Mitchell. Walter, being the giddy school girl he is, constantly asks Mitchell “are you going to submit the score? Are you going to submit the score?” It is more than apparent that the impartial twingalaxies.com crew is extremely partial to Billy “Hot Stuff” Mitchell.

To show you the character of Brian “Grimace” Kuh, Steve asks to see the tape, but Grimace promptly scoffs at the request and says defiantly, “only one viewing, only one play through” Give me a break. This guy is why gamers are given a bad name.

I am going to leave the movie review here. I don’t want to spoil it for you. The entire movie Billy spends dodging Steve’s challenges. Billy obviously has a man crush on Steve and is afraid that he will give in to temptation.

In one of the funnier scenes from the movie, Guinness calls Walter Day, I mean twingalaxies.com central command. Walter Day is first shown wearing a regular hoodie. As soon as Walter finds out that it is official twingalaxies.com business, Walter, doing his best Superman impression, quickly throws on his referee shirt on. Too funny.

Another funny moment is near the end of the movie. Sanders and Mitchell are at Mitchell’s restaurant and asked what they thought of Steve. Sanders said that Wiebe was a good guy and definitely trustworthy with integrity. Billy gave Sanders this death stare look. God, I got a kick out of that.

Overall, this movie is a good watch. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this, while watching my fiancé laugh at some of the goons in the movie.