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In 1997, junior hockey coach Graham James pled guilty to sexual assault. In 1999, CTV aired "The Sheldon Kennedy Story", the story of one man's life after a nightmare of abuse while playing junior hockey under James.
The latest in a series of docudramas to come out of Alliance-Atlantis, "The Sheldon Kennedy Story" casts 23-year-old Canadian actor Jonathan Scarfe in the role of Sheldon Kennedy, both as a man in his late teens and early twenties all the way up to his early thirties. Polly Shannon, the quintessential girl next door, plays Sheldon's wife Jana, who loves him enough to stand by him through everything. As happens with all made-for-TV stories, there is something lost in the translation. Scarfe does an excellent job of playing Kennedy, but there is something missing. Kennedy, as portrayed in the film, just doesn't come across as a sympathetic character. Wisden's Graham James comes across as both creepy and desperate, Shannon's Jana as both loving and tolerant, but Kennedy is only irritating. Were this a horror movie (or murder mystery) rather than a "based on a true story" drama, viewers would be asking for Kennedy's execution. The true failing of the movie is the "everything that's gone wrong in my life is someone else's fault" attitude of the title character. That was "been there, done that, moved on" in the mid-1990s with Alanis Morissette. Once was enough. The viewer can almost hear "You Oughta Know" playing in the back of their mind as the writers have Sheldon whining about how horrible his life has been. Regardless of what Sheldon may have gone through as a youth, that's no excuse for his behavior as an adult. Unfortunately, one of the constraints of having roughly 90 minutes in which to tell a story is that most is always left out. That aside, though, the movie is excellently crafted. Jonathan Scarfe proves his talent for taking on a range of character emotions, although so far, he has yet to play a "good" character. In the recent "The Morrison Murders", Scarfe, son of Canadian actors Alan Scarfe ("Mysterious Island") and Sara Botsford ("E.N.G"), plays murderer Luke Morrison. In CBC's white-flop "White Lies", Scarfe plays skinhead-wannabe Ian McKee. In "E.R." (the role which brought Scarfe to the attention of many Americans), Scarfe played Dr. Carter's cousin, Chase, who destroyed his life with drugs. "The Sheldon Kennedy Story" was arguably his most difficult role to date -- Scarfe had only a few weeks to learn how to skate before stepping into "Sheldon Kennedy"'s skates. Go To Page: 1 2
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