Director: Clayton Jacobson.
Cast: Shane Jacobson, Eve von Bibra, Clayton Jacobson, Ronald Jacobson, Jesse Jacobson, Morihiko Hasebe, Vicki Musso, Glenn Preusker, Chris Davis.
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| You never want to see this face poking through your dunny door. |
I recently joined Jono Pech on his excellent podcast Comedy Rewind, which re-examines funny films from a bygone era and looks at how they hold up. Our topic was that great Aussie comedy Kenny. Listen here as we dissect the film in great depth.
Or you can read this blog. Or both.
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"None are less visible than those we decide not to see."
- Stadtler Lewis
I can't figure out who Stadtler Lewis was. There was a geneticist named Lewis Stadler, who quite possibly said this rather profound quote, but the internet isn't definitive on this.
Either way, this quote opens Kenny and sums up the oddly philosophical nature of the film. While on the promotion circuit for the movie, director Clayton Jacobson and his actor brother Shane were keen to spruik Kenny as a kind of Dalai Lama of dunnies, Buddha of bogs, guru of garderobes, shaman of shitters... I can go on and on with these... wise man of water closets... ok, I'll stop now.
These epithets are weirdly accurate and nail the utterly bizarre idea behind the film. A mockumentary about a man who works in the portaloo industry, whose "chin up" credo helps him keep his head above the literal and not-so-literal shit in his life - who the hell would watch that?
Lots of people evidently. Kenny is the 45th highest grossing Aussie film at the Australian box office of all time (as of Jan 2022), earning almost $7.8m. That puts it higher than Crocodile Dundee 3, Wolf Creek and Mad Max. Not bad off a sub-one-million-dollar budget.
It's also not bad for an essentially plotless faux-doco. At the time of its release, Kenny somehow became a cultural phenomenon in Australia. Shane Jacobson appeared on talk shows in character, current affairs programs did glitzy packages on it, and the country fell in love with this lisping, put-upon plumber. He even scored a (little-watched) spin-off TV series. For a short while, Kenny was everywhere, in a way few Aussie films ever have been in Australia.
It would have been easy for Kenny to fail, but Jacobson's sincerity in the lead role makes it not just succeed - it makes it iconic. Kenny is a true blue-collar hero. His quest is for happiness and respect, and he encounters no real villain beyond a snide society that looks down on him. There is no real hero's journey here, but Kenny seems a bit more comfortable in his own skin by film's end. He has a job opportunity (which he rejects), a potential romance, and he finally takes symbolic revenge against the aforementioned snide society by pouring shit into an arrogant yuppie's sports car.
But really, Kenny just keeps being Kenny. He's easy to love. He reels off home-spun wisdom, poo facts, and wonderful one-liners ("He's as silly as a bum full of Smarties" is my personal favourite), while enduring a shitty ex-wife, an arsehole of a dad, dim-witted colleagues, and a crap job (pun intended). He largely does it all with a smile and a joke. He's accepting of everyone, and wants to be everyone's mate.
The secret hero is director Clayton Jacobson. Imagine if Kenny was a straight-ahead comedy film, not a mockumentary. It would suck. Unequivocally. Shane Jacobson's naturalistic performance could make it feel real, but the doco approach amplifies it to another level. It makes everything hit harder than it ever could. The pathos is dialled up a notch, and so is the humour, the heart, and the message. Add in the support cast (especially Eve von Bibra) that let Kenny shine even more, and it bubbles with Aussie underdog charm.
Kenny is a rare Australian film. It's in that elite bunch of homegrown movies everyone knows about and loves, alongside the likes of The Castle, Strictly Ballroom, Crocodile Dundee and Babe. But it's also a real lightning-in-a-bottle kind of movie. It's an unlikely success on paper, utterly unrepeatable, and unlike any other film in Australian cinema history.
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