The Planet of Junior Brown
6.6 /10 1 Votes6.6
Music director Christopher Dedrick Country Canada | 6.4/10 Genre Drama Duration Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Release date 6 September 1997 (1997-09-06) (TIFF) Cast (Mrs. Brown), Martin Villafana (Junior Brown), Rainbow Francks (Buddy Clark (as Rainbow Sun Francks)), (Mr. Pool), (Butter), (Duckie)Similar movies The Santa Clause , The Night Before , Arthur Christmas , Miracle on 34th Street , The Nightmare Before Christmas , It's a Wonderful Life Tagline Passion Moves Mountains |
The Planet of Junior Brown, retitled Junior's Groove in some releases, is a Canadian drama film released in 1997. Directed by Clement Virgo, the film was written by Virgo and Cameron Bailey as an adaptation of Virginia Hamilton's 1971 novel The Planet of Junior Brown.

The film stars Martin Villafana as the titular Junior Brown, an overweight and schizophrenic child prodigy studying piano from music teacher Miss Peebs (Margot Kidder). The film's cast also includes Rainbow Sun Francks, Clark Johnson, Lynn Whitfield, Sarah Polley, Richard Chevolleau, Denis Akiyama and Dan Lett.
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 1997, but was distributed primarily as a CBC Television film airing in November of that year. The film aired on Showtime and Fox Family Channel in the United States in 1999, following which Whitfield won the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Performance in a Youth/Children's Series or Special in 2000.
References
The Planet of Junior Brown WikipediaThe Planet of Junior Brown IMDb The Planet of Junior Brown themoviedb.org