The makers of The King of Kong, one of the year's most entertaining films, are working on a fictionalized remake for New Line. Ed Cunningham, the producer, says Will Ferrell watched the movie and turned down their offer to star, on the grounds that the source material could not be improved. He might be right. Every bit as funny as your average Ferrell/Vince Vaughn sports-movie spoof, The King of Kong also brims with real humanity. Without ever straining for pathos (at least not without its tongue firmly in cheek, as in a defeat montage set to Leonard Cohen's morbid "Everybody Knows"), it satisfies on many levels.
One of a number of recent comic documentaries focusing on American competitive subcultures, Kong follows Steve Wiebe, an affable middle-school science teacher with something to prove, into a harrowing world of competitive video gaming. Anyone who still believes in the stereotype of the meek, lovable nerd will be shocked by the level of passive-aggressive viciousness on display. The gaming geeks whose worlds are shattered by the Donkey Kong record Wiebe sets in his garage may be meek, but they are far from lovable.
Less meek (but possibly more lovable, at least in his capacity for near-mustache-twirling villainy) is Wiebe's competitor, Billy Mitchell, a compulsive competitor sitting on multiple classic-gaming records. (He was the first person to reach the 256th and final screen in Pac-Man, for one.) Mitchell's criticized the film in recent interviews, but the stuff they have on him is pretty damning; his cockiness borders on pathological. But the funny thing is, Kong fosters some sympathy for him, too — another reason not to remake the film. Ben Stiller mugging through a performance as Mitchell (and Vaughn as Wiebe? It must have crossed their minds) would flatten out the remarkable subtlety that Cunningham and director Seth Gordon have brought to this seemingly lightweight material. You may laugh when one character calls Donkey Kong a metaphor for life, but The King of Kong effortlessly reveals the ape within us all. — Peter Smith
