Fraternity Test

We need to talk about Kenny (2006). At least, that seems to be the memo going out to critics reviewing Clayton Jacobson’s follow-up feature some twelve years later, Brothers’ Nest (2018). The Guardian’s review mentions Kenny four times, positing, ‘The Jacobsons have given us another comedy classic, far stranger than the last.’

‘This ain’t Kenny,’ warns FilmInk. ‘Anyone expecting a redux of that amiable toilet-themed flick is in for the shock of their lives.’

‘Brothers’ Nest is as far removed from the Jacobsons’ toilet-fixing mockumentary as you can get,’ according to Concrete Playground.

From Triple J: ‘radically different from what you’d expect’.

Variety: ‘a very different kind of vehicle’.

The Sydney Morning Herald: ‘there’s none of [Kenny’s] genial view of the world’.

You get the idea.

Now, I don’t mean to disparage these critics for going to the Kenny well (or outhouse, if you prefer). It’s an obvious point of reference, given that film’s prominence in Australian culture – and at the box office, where its A$7.6 million takings made it the second-highest-grossing Aussie film of its release year – and that this is the director’s first feature since. What’s instructive about the dominance of this narrative, I think, is how strongly critics position Brothers’ Nest as diametrically opposed to its predecessor. As the 2018 film