Pun Salad

It's all about competitive video gaming, the effort to set new scoring records on vintage arcade machines. Specifically, Donkey Kong. And this is one of those documentaries that shows you a hidden world of intrigue, rivalry, and dubious obsession of which you might have otherwise have been blissfully unaware. The filmmakers mostly just let the principals ramble on about their field, and the movie sometimes seems to be going for the cheap laugh at their expense.

On the other hand, the movie makes it clear that the competitors are operating at an undeniable pinnacle of achievement, requiring outstanding reflexes, coordination, and memory. Yes, it's an achievement set in an artificial universe of arbitrary rules programmed by obscure geniuses decades ago. Yet, can we not say the same thing of Major League Baseball? Hm.

A good portion of the movie was filmed right here in New Hampshire, at Funspot at Weirs Beach. (The largest arcade in the world.) Unfortunately, you only get the merest glimpse of outdoors; it might as well have been in Nutley, NJ.

Irony: One of the places I used to play was the long-gone Funspot in Dover, NH. I returned this DVD to the Blockbuster store which stands in the very location Funspot used to occupy! No, wait, that's not irony, that's just a very strained coincidence. Never mind.