A pleasant surprise and an unlikely hero

Kenny - 3.5/5

After all the recent movies that should have been better than they were, it's a real pleasant surprise to find one that is acrually much better than you'd think from the description. Kenny is an ultra low-budget Australian mockumentary following the eponymous hero through his work as a plumber for portable toilet blocks. Those fearing a surfeit of crass toilet humour should think again. Yes, there are the inevitable range of toilet based jokes, some amusing, some not, but the tone of the film is less gross-out and more a slightly wry, witty approach.

Whereas most mockumentaries from Christopher Guest's work (This is spinal Tap, Best in Show, etc...) through The Office to Borat make their humour from mocking their protagonists eccentricities and foibles, Kenny presents us with a fundamentally decent human being being looked down on by all around. In many ways then, Kenny is actually closer to those few people who have become stars from real fly on the wall documentaries. Thus the film, whilst never being side-splittingly hilarious has a gentle charm that draws you in and some delightful Australian phrasing of things. So much so that you can't help being delighted when, in the final scene, Kenny finally gets his own back on an obnoxious motorist.

It's probably a bit too long and takes a wee while to get going and some of the best bits come as Kenny makes a fish-out-of-water trip to Nasville, Tennessee for a trade convention - some of it has to be seen to be believed.

The opening credit offers us what seems (given the subject matter of the film) a rather grandiose quote along the lines of "There's nobody more invisible than those that we choose not to see", but in its gently, charming and amusing way the film gives us a good illustration of this.

Its probably not everybody's cup of tea - several people walked out when I went to see it (presumably because it wasn't all gross s*** gags) - and it takes a wee bit of effort to get into it, but is well worth the while, and in Kenny himself we have one of the most unlikely heroes in movies this year.