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(This is my new segment, where I recommend movies you can stream on Netflix Instant. No, these are not advertorials.)
I know, I know, I should’ve seen King of Kong a long time ago. I don’t know why I didn’t. It just slipped through the cracks like your sister’s queef. But that’s not important now. The point is, I finally saw it, and god d*mn is it good. So, so good.
I may have been subconsciously avoiding King of Kong because it’s a documentary about two guys competing for the Donkey Kong world record, and I’m sort of averse to anything related to video games. But as I found out, the fact that it’s a documentary about video gamers isn’t really important. Almost nothing about the plot is important except that it involves Billy Mitchell. Billy Mitchell might be the best movie character of all time. Billy Mitchell is like Fred Simmons from The Foot Fist Way and the Rex Kwon Do guy from Napoleon Dynamite combined, and yet by most accounts, he is a real person. He has flowing, blow-dried mane. He wears patriotic neckties, in which he takes great pride. He is a hot-sauce magnate. He holds the Donkey Kong world record. Of course he is from Florida. He is a far more complex and awesome villain than you could ever write. He’s like a local used-car salesman who has convinced everyone around him that he actually is the character he plays in his wacky commercials. He even has henchman! In the world of competitive arcade gaming, he is a God among dorks.
Billy Mitchell is the most awesome thing about King of Kong, but he’s not the only awesome thing. Everyone in it (mostly people who care a lot about world records in 80s arcade games) has that amazing combination of incredible dorkiness mixed with recognizable humanity. They are some of the most incredible dorks in all of dorkdom, and you will surely recognize yourself in them. Like Napoleon Dynamite, you would swear they blocked off all the streets in order to shoot a period piece set in 1990, yet King of Kong was reportedly shot on location in reality in 2005-2007, in ostensibly real places like Hollywood, Florida and Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. I started watching King of Kong at about 11:30 at night expecting to fall asleep halfway through. Not only did I watch the entire thing, I spent the next hour on the computer looking for the latest updates on the characters.
