Another Shameless Plug
From my review of the surprisingly good The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters:
Like many born in the late 60s and early 70s, my childhood was shaped by arcade games. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Centipede, and especially Donkey Kong occupied the vast majority of my non-school pre-pubescent time. I wasted far too many hours feeding the quarter-eaters. After discovering girls, science fiction, and movies, my interested waned and by the end of 1980s, like most of my generation, the classic video game joined the Betamax, blow-dried hair, and Night Ranger as relics of the past. In his documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, director Seth Gordon skillfully explores the lives of contemporary die hard classic arcade game fans, a group for whom time stopped in 1982.
Continued...
Labels: Donkey Kong, movie, review, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
posted by Rick Klaw at
10:59 AM
2 Comments:
That Steve Mitchell guy completely reminded me of Bill Murray's "Big Ern" McCracken from Kingpin. The whole "gotta be the best at something" line in the trailer struck me as kind of funny and poignant at the same time and your review just added to that feeling. I assume the movie works even if you weren't an arcade guy back in the day? And was it making fun of these people?
It should work if you know next to nothing about arcade games. Director Gordon successfully brings the story to a human level, regardless of who you are or what you are trying to achieve. Gordon allows the viewer decide who to laugh at. He plays the whole thing straight and serious. The film is funny because of what people do, not because of anything that Gordon does. He enables them to be heroes and goats of their own making.
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