The best new documentary that feels like it must be a mockumentary is the new film 'The King of Kong'. When I saw the film last night, it felt like I was seeing Christopher Guest at his best. In 'Kong', we enter the world of Donkey Kong video game fanatics, and in that world there is an endless supply of clueless and self-involved eccentrics so central to films like 'Best in Show'. But the laughs here come even faster, partly because these are real people...such as Billy Mitchell -- who, cluelessly, has no qualms about a camera documenting his villainous behavior. Yes, the film is a documentary -- yet we become wrapped up in a titanic struggle between good & evil, believe it or not. Mitchell makes Ben Stiller's character in 'Dodgeball' seem modest and self-effacing. Then there is Steve Wiebe, the 'everyday Joe' who challenges the great & mighty Mitchell; Variety notes that he "embodies the aphorism that nice guys finish last". His wife and family are willing --even 
eager-- to list his life long string of failures, and he is relegated to the basement as he readies himself for the battle of his life. Touchingly, his kids like to hang with him at these times, as can be seen on the left.
'The King of Kong'--with a sharply focused lens on an arcane element of American society--finally paints a broad brush; as the review in the Minneapolis/St. Paul CityPages says, it seems in the end a "metaphor for life itself ".
And you get to learn a new word--chumpatized!
