Kenny (2024)

Kenny

When Kenny was introduced as a plumber at a portable toilet rental company in 2006, Australian mockumentaries knew they had found their champion. Shane Jacobson brings an irresistibly lovable energy to the amiable, overalls-clad expert on all things lavatorial, in a film that became both critics’ favourite and sleeper box office hit.

Kenny set new standards for the mockumentary at least as far as locally produced comedies were concerned. Alongside a tight sense of verisimilitude (performances from the straight-faced cast are beautifully deadpan), several key sequences were staged at real-life events including the Melbourne Cup and “Poo HQ”, otherwise known as the Pumper and Cleaner Expo in Nashville, Tennessee.

Kenny’s running commentary and colourful turns of phrase serve a number of purposes, fleshing out the film’s faux premise, developing his character (and others’) setting up gags and even adding pathos. An arsenal of true blue expressions and one-liners (“busier than a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad,” “silly as a bum full of smarties”) aside, much of the dialogue has resonance beyond its immediate context.

“It takes a certain kind of person to do what I do,” says our loveable rotund dunny doyen. “No-one’s ever impressed. No one’s ever fascinated. If you’re a fireman, all the kids will want to jump on the back of the truck and follow you to a fire. There’s going to be no kids willing to do that with me.”

Kenny was indeed something of a family affair: Shane Jacobson wrote it with his brother Clayton; who directed it and plays Kenny’s snobbish brother; while Clayton’s son Jesse plays Kenny’s son; not forgetting their dad Ronald who plays their dad onscreen too.

Ronald steals every scene he appears in with his wonderfully snarky turn (“I didn’t put you through school to be a glorified turd burglar!”) each line delivered as if he just sucked the juice out of a lemon. Outside the mockumentary context, the whiny naturalism of Ronald’s presence would probably have felt flat. Here it works a treat.

If the lines between reality and fiction get a little blurry on the familial side of things, then product placement makes Kenny one hell of an elaborate case study. The film was funded to the tune of $500,000 by Splashdown the same company that Kenny works for; their website homepage contains a “planning calculator” not dissimilar from our hero giving a quote to a potential customer in the opening scene where he asks if catering for their event includes alcohol and curry (sadly missing from site).

In the second half of the movie, after mining Kenny’s through-the-line persona and his pride in his work for all the comedy it’s worth, the Jacobson brothers take some of the laughs away and bring in more drama. There are bonding scenes between him and his son, a health scare with his father, tensions with his brother and a romantic subplot with a flight attendant that Kenny charms by fixing the plane’s toilet. He is fascinated by its powerful flush system. “Just watch it in there mate,” Kenny tells a fellow passenger. “Once you press that flusher it’ll probably suck your guts out through ya bum.”

One of the things this lovely little film does so wonderfully is approach a subject that has been taboo forever. And for such an icky comedy, Jacobson exhibits remarkable restraint. The gross-out gags are not overdone they’re left to our imagination.

There’s something quintessentially Australian about Kenny; irreverent but earnest, simple but not stupid, self-effacing yet profound with big blokes everywhere you look. And very funny too.

Watch Kenny For Free On Gomovies.