Like the 2002 documentary about obsessive filmgoers called Cinemania, I find it difficult to laugh at the weirdos onscreen as much as the filmmakers want me to, because I'm spending too much time identifying with them.

Okay, now let's be honest. The only internet forum that I frequent regularly and have an active profile on is one for people who love classic video games. So, when I received my catalogue of films that were showing at this year's Sundance Film Festival and a documentary about classic arcade gamers called Chasing Ghosts was on the list, I was excited, and Ghosts became one of my most-anticipated films of the festival. Turns out that Ghosts was boring, but for those of my film critic peers who ventured over to the Slamdance Festival (which runs at the same time and in the same small city as Sundance, and has turned out some winners that Sundance has overlooked in years past such as The Daytrippers or Mad Hot Ballroom) reported back that there was a similar and much better documentary over there called The King of Kong, which was about a rivalry between Billy Mitchell, the very strong-personalitied long-time holder of the world's top Donley Kong high score, and Steve Wiebe, the meek public school teacher who recently challenged Mitchell's seemingly unsurpassable score.

The King of Kong isn't just about whether or not Wiebe (pronounced "Weebee," although almost everyone in the film mispronounces it) can best Mitchell's score-a lot of what goes on involves trying to disprove the validity of one or the others' various scores by various insufferable nerds who, among other things, inspect Wiebe's Donkey Kong arcade board when he isn't home and dicky with the videotape of Mitchell's high score. Wiebe is very transparently made out to be the good guy and Mitchell the bad, which has caused a lot of dismay and discrediting of the film from my online retrogaming community. While Mitchell is arrogant as hell and questionable in action, one thing that is easily overlooked in the movie is that he has proven himself to be maybe the best classic arcade player in the United States-if not world-consistently for several decades running. You might remember a news story from a few years back (that is given brief mention in the film) that someone finally got the first perfect score on Pac-Man after all these years-that was Mitchell.

Director Seth Gordon doesn't seem to trust his characters or his characterization of them, as he spends about the first half of the movie putting the name of the person speaking on screen, long after the viewer has figured out who the key characters are. And, despite the surprisingly affecting story arc (the rights have already been sold to make a feature narrative film from the material), his editing and storytelling could use some tightening; it's really that he chose good subject matter that makes this a good film, and not so much his ability as a director. Besides, like the 2002 documentary about obsessive filmgoers called Cinemania, I find it difficult to laugh at the weirdos onscreen as much as the filmmakers want me to, because I'm spending too much time identifying with them. | Pete Timmermann

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