The Brothers Grimsby, or just Grimsby
for short, follows the story of a boneheaded English football yobbo named Nobby
(Sacha Baron Cohen) who lives in the poor fishing town of Grimsby. His long-life dream is to reunite with his
brother Sebastian (Mark Strong), whom he hasn’t seen in 28 years. But when the opportunity comes, Nobby
dimwittingly compromises his brother’s mission, as Sebastian happens to be a
secret agent for MI-6. What ensues is the
brothers going on a crazy spy adventure to stop a major terrorist attack while
a psychotic assassin is set loose on them.
First and foremost, the story is
incredibly lazy and stupid. But way
worse is the quality of its humor. I’m
not going to say that none of the jokes are hilarious – there are definitely some
laughs to be had. However, the majority
of which are just disgusting, diminishing the comedic gratification
that can be taken from them.
I understand that going extreme has
always been Sacha Baron Cohen’s thing.
And that kind of comedy has worked in the past when clever satire is involved. But with Grimsby,
Cohen misfires by being shocking for being shocking’s sake. There’s no thoughtfulness behind the outrageous
antics.
The movie has this notoriously
notable scene that involves elephants.
As part of this movie’s promotion, Cohen brought this footage during his
guesting on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Since
the scene is extremely crude, it wasn’t shown on TV. Instead, it was played to the audience and
the camera captured their reactions. It
was a very clever marketing gimmick, and probably the main reason why I decided
to watch this movie. It made me
intrigued. When I finally get to see it
for myself, I was weirdly laughing and cringing at the same time – just as Kimmel’s
audience did. It’s a unique comical sequence,
but just too dirty to actually please.
In fact, I was cringing for most
of this movie. Even those times where I
laughed or chuckled. If nothing else, that elephant scene represents
what Grimsby is: cringe-worthy even
when funny.
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