Lyssa Beyer

After countless school days devoted to watching them, documentary films have become a genre of film that I attempt to avoid at all costs. But when a documentary such as “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” comes out, it almost forces me to re-think avoiding documentary films as if they were the plague.

The film surrounds novice gamer Steve Wiebe and the trials and tribulations of his journey to destroy the top score of gaming legend Billy Mitchell, the uncontested champion of the Donkey Kong gaming world for over 20 years.

Steve is a family man with a wife and two kids. His best friend, Mike Thompson, is shown early in the film describing how Steve “has never been No. 1 at anything.” It is then revealed that the underlying reason to his pursuit for the record is the let down he still feels from not being able to pitch in the state baseball championship game which his team played in. And despite being a huge fan of video games, he never comes across as anything other than a middle school science teacher who loves to interact with his students and have a beer with his friends at the end of the day.

Bill, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of Steve. He attempts to explain his dominance in the “sport” of competitive gaming by using war, bible and government issues like abortion as analogies. His cell phone wallpaper says “never surrender” and his parents are even shown saying “Billy Mitchell is a winner.” He has few friends and essentially has no other motive in life other than to be able to call himself the ultimate gamer.

By showing this footage early on, the film creates itself as a real life version of “Happy Gilmore” or “Dodgeball.” Steve is this film’s version of Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore or Vince Vaughn’s Peter LaFleur. The film’s ruthless competitor, Billy, eerily resembles the likes of Shooter McGavin or White Goodman from the two previously mentioned films.

But what makes this film much better than “Dodgeball” and slightly better than “Happy Gilmore” is that the events being shown are real. Because it is real and the characters are taking themselves so seriously, the film is not only humorous and entertaining, but heartbreaking and suspenseful when it needs to be.

There’s never a sense in “Happy Gilmore” or “Dodgeball” that the underdog won’t win. However, there’s always a sense that this film’s protagonist won’t for sure end up winning, which constantly puts you on edge. The slogan for the Major League Baseball playoffs is “you can’t script this” in reference to the exciting action that takes place in the baseball postseason in October. Ironically, though, you can’t seem to script the stuff that is shown in this movie either, coming from a sport that is not known for being anywhere close to the same excitement as the MLB playoffs. And despite the excitement associated with the MLB playoffs, you would never notice the two are different while watching this film.

Making the characters come across the way they do was probably easy for the filmmakers involved. At the same time however, the film never seems as if it is attempting to force the viewer to feel a certain way regarding what the documentary is showing. As a viewer watching the film, we are respected, allowed to observe and then are able to form our own assumption based upon what was shown. This is something that doesn’t happen with typical documentaries, most notably “Super Size Me” or any Michael Moore documentary, where at the end of the film you almost feel bad as a viewer for disagreeing with their viewpoints.

The film should be praised mainly because it makes an interesting story out of competitive gaming, something laughably insignificant as far as movie plots are concerned. Being able to do this out of two of the world’s most annoying things, competitive gaming and documentaries, cannot be easy. But the film is virtually flawless as it makes it hard to believe what is being shown is the same genre of film that was being shown to you school day upon school day.