King Of Kong vs Double Dare

There is, in the world, a very peculiar type of nerd: the late adopter. The current nerd stereotype is the one ahead of the curve. The one who waited early in line for the iPhone, early in line for Lord of the Rings, early in line for Harry Potter. But there is another, more suspicious, more socially awkward nerd out there, way out there in 1982, where the hardest video game is Donkey Kong, and the coolest thing you can accomplish is being the best. At Donkey Kong.

Steve Wiebe is a nice guy from Washington. He’s an instant underdog. We learn that he was laid off from his job on the same day he closed on a new house. We learn that he’s never been a winner, or even a finisher, and, from one friend, that he cries more than anyone you’ve ever met, not out of sadness, but from the sheer frustration of his constant failure. We get one shot of Steve crying. Just crying and crying and crying, without saying anything, and he won me over. He’s like a puppy with a limp. I don’t recall meeting another movie character like Steve Wiebe, but I was glad to, because he seems smart, nice and genuinely good. (Although in real life, with the crying and never-finishing? Eh, I’m good. I got that covered here, thanks.) In his garage at home, at night (per the orders of his neglected wife), Steve plays Donkey Kong. And one day, he breaks a million points, which no one has ever officially claimed to do. I have to word it that way, because if it’s possible to score a million on Donkey Kong, then someone probably did it years ago. But in the world of King of Kong, you must register your score with a company called Twin Galaxies, an organization run out of what looks like a storage closet by a man named Walter Day. I’m pretty sure Walter lives in his car, because we never see him inside a home, and well…if it walks like a duck, you know? We see footage of Walter from 1982, when he looked happy, successful, healthy and level-headed. We mainly get footage of him in the present day, however, and I don’t have to tell you it’s not 1982 anymore.

We also meet Billy Mitchell, who, back in 1982 had Scott Baio hair, a huge hickey and his picture in Life Magazine for his video game achievements. In the present day, he looks like a low-rent Criss Angel, with blow-dried black hair and what I’m sure he would call an intense stare. Billy lives in Florida, near a place called Fun World, which looks like a video arcade out of Square Pegs (I’d originally typed Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but it’s not that nice. Fun World doesn’t appear to have any games newer than Donkey Kong—Donkey Kong Jr. is mentioned but never shown). No one who works or plays at Fun World seems to have much fun; they all consider video games something done for competition, for the bragging rights of that top score. The only person we see smiling while playing is Steve Wiebe (he is, in fact, the only person we see playing, which is one of the biggest problems of King of Kong). I kept waiting for Billy Mitchell to show (King of Kong has a lot of scenes of people waiting for Billy Mitchell. He’s not worth the wait.), but he never touches a joystick. He only brags, boasts, and struts around, reminding everybody how awesome he used to be, and insisting it’s an existing condition. You hear the Germans mocked for Hasselhoff’s continued popularity, but I’m betting there’s a guy down in Florida who thinks he’s the greatest.

Besides Steve Wiebe, King of Kong has the least appealing group of characters I remember seeing in a movie, documentary or otherwise. Seriously, I’d rather spend the day with the Friedmans than anyone besides Steve Wiebe in King of Kong. What if Dwight Shrute, Pat from SNL, Matthew from Newsradio and Booger from Revenge of the Nerds were real, and they hung out at an arcade down the street? How often would you go hang out with them? Never, right? That’s the impression we get from King of Kong. I mean, if you decide to make the documentary, I’d think you’d take enough time to find someone who could say something, anything interesting about Donkey Kong or any of its players. We only getting fawning Billy Mitchell followers (a couple think of Billy Mitchell the way you might think of Lance Armstrong, or Tony Hawk, or Elvis). The director, Seth Gordon, appears to have gathered approximately three days worth of footage (King of Kong clocks in at barely over an hour. Even the winning game of Donkey Kong takes nearly twice that.), and isn’t sure what to do with most of it. Two camera set-ups are used: person on couch talking to camera and person sitting profile playing video game. None of the characters besides Steve Wiebe are fleshed out in the slightest (you’ll hear that Billy Mitchell is a principle figure in the film, but he’s edited in only as the villain). We’ve seen documentaries like this before, but were given the chance to get to know the players in the days before their competition. Is anyone else trying to win Donkey Kong besides Steve Wiebe? We learn that one elderly woman is trying to break the Q-Bert record, but she’s used only as a flimsy (staged-looking) plot point, and then dropped. Spellbound introduced us to a group of kids, portrayed a full story arc for each, and left us with a compelling, surprising ending. The same thing happened in Hoop Dreams, The Heart of the Game and countless other films about the heartbreak that accompanies competition. The makers of King of Kong don’t appear to have done any research (besides the one Life Magazine article), don’t do anything interesting in terms of filming (half of it looks like Cops or anything you’ve filmed on vacation), and only find one guy to care about in the entire fun world.

As you might have guessed, King of Kong is a movie (and had an audience) virtually devoid of females. One wonders what the guys from Fun World might make of the women of Double Dare. At least one of them would never show up for the fight, that’s for sure.

You know Zoe Bell as the stuntwoman riding atop the car in Death Proof. You also know her, though you might not realize it, as the muscle behind Xena: Warrior Princess,and the Bride from Kill Bill. She’s from New Zealand , movie-star-hot (well, okay, sitcom-hot, but that’s a lot hotter than it used to be), and completely intolerant of bullshit. When we meet her in Double Dare, she has never had a stunt job outside her native country, but has come to Los Angeles to try for the big leagues, with a mentor who has seen a version of Hollywood we seldom hear about.

Bell is welcomed by Jeannie Epper, a seasoned stuntwoman, who worked on the Wonder Woman TV show, as well as probably Cagney and Lacey, The Bionic Woman and countless other shows where it used to be considered a stunt for a woman to stand on the hood of an unmoving car. Epper is, like Bell, no-nonsense, funny, smart and self-deprecating. It’s rare to find two people, in a documentary about Hollywood no less, who know exactly where they fall in the pecking order, exactly how much attention that should get them, and exactly how ridiculous it can all look to outsiders. Epper takes Bell into her home, helps her train, and introduces her to other stunt performers and producers. Bell isn’t the most talented of the stunt people, but she’s the bravest, and the most willing to get off her bruised back and try again and again. Which brings her to Quentin Tarantino, a shot at doubling for Uma Thurman, and unbeknownst to her, the lead in Death Proof. It’s cool to see someone succeed, and have no doubts that they deserve it.

Bell and Epper’s friendship is the core of Double Dare, but the film also has much to say about sexism in Hollywood, the importance of the stunt unions, and how award shows are simultaneously pointless and necessary. Epper still works, even though it’s more of the variety of falling out of the way of cars in an alley, than running along the top of airplanes. Like Billy Mitchell, Epper remembers 1982 fondly. Unlike Billy Mitchell, she’s declined to remain living there. And Zoe Bell? Man, she’s just getting started. You won’t find that one crying in her garage anytime soon.

King of Kong: C
Double Dare: B+