Kenny aka The Kid Brother (1987)

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2021) Coming from a French-Canadian background, it always amazes me when a big movie from my childhood ends up being almost unknown to the rest of the world. I should know better, of course, but discovering that 1987’s Kenny, a staple of French-Canadian culture in the late 1980s, is practically unknown elsewhere is still a surprise. Of course, there are a few reasons why the film would have left such a mark. As a French-Canadian co-production with a very colloquial dub, it was ideally suited for CanCon-friendly reruns. But we’re really dancing around the film’s main claim to fame here, and that’s featuring the young Kenny Easterday in a semi-autobiographical role as a boy without a lower body. Getting around on his hands, his skateboard or the kindness of his family and friends (riding in the front basket of his brother’s bike, for instance), he was a striking case of a disabled person showcased in a film without special effects or camera tricks. Strong stuff for a grade-school boy such as myself living in an ordinary small town! Watching the film again much later, it did strike me, midway through the film, how quickly Kenny’s condition takes a back seat to the film’s family drama. Cleverly using the plot device of a TV crew making a documentary to answer basic questions about its protagonist and air out some of the obvious gawking, Kenny then moves to more heartfelt domestic drama, and it rather works at being more than just a look-at-that show. The working-class suburbs of Pittsburgh are very effectively used, and French-Canadian writer-director Claude Gagnon brings a middle-class sensibility to the way the characters are portrayed. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a decent one despite using non-actors (Kenny and his real-life brother) and a very gritty style. Revisiting the film also led me to the end of the real-world story as well: Kenny Easterday died in 2016 of complications related to his condition at the respectable age of 42, and one of his most detailed obituaries remains one from… French-Canadian media.