Directed by:
Louis LeterrierCinematography:
Oliver WoodCast:
Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Strong, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe, Penélope Cruz, Barkhad Abdi, Scott Adkins, David Harewood, Tamsin Egerton (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
When two inseparable brothers are adopted by two different families, their lives quickly fork off in opposite directions. Sebastian (Mark Strong) works his way up in the British government agency MI6 to become their most revered assassin and Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen) meets the love of his life (Rebel Wilson), has nine children and spends his days shouting abuse at football fans in Grimsby. After spending 28 years looking for his brother, Nobby finally locates Sebastian in London and travels down to surprise him. Sebastian, however, is on an assignment and Nobby's bombshell revelation startles him causing him to shoot and kill the wrong target. Forced to go on the run, Sebastian and Nobby set off across the capital trying to lose their pursuers while Nobby tries to make amends with his long-lost sibling. (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (11)
Sacha Baron Cohen goes a little farther (or, ahem, deeper) with each film, and this time it was a little too far (deep) for my tastes in places. But what can I say, I had more fun than with Bruno and a bit more than with The Dictator, and I think that once in a while a comedy like this doesn't hurt either. My admiration goes to Mark Strong, who went all in.
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I consider the moments when I unexpectedly snorted with laughter at Grimsby to be some of the darkest moments of my life, but then again, there's a bit of the Australopithecus running through everyone's genome. Otherwise, the no-frills humor and total surrendering of basic standards of taste aren't exactly the main problem. The stumbling block is not the content of the individual jokes, but their form. After most of them, we get a second to laugh (even with the music suddenly turned off, for example) and you get the impression that someone must have cut the film at the last minute to remove a funny face and studio cackle from Cohen after each one. Maybe that's why the film is thankfully an endurable 80 minutes. Compared to the previous two pieces in last year's trio of spy parodies (Kingsman, Spy), Grimsby surprisingly doesn't manage much in the way of action, which amounts to (not just compared to the perfect Hardcore Henry) snoozing POV or haphazardly cut fight scenes, where especially with Scott Adkins fight it’s a real letdown since the guy is such a badass that there's no need to cover anything up at all. Which actually matches the film's main problem, which is that parodying spy movies takes a back seat to Cohen's buffoonery throughout the entire film, which must have been a post-production decision given the untapped potential of many of the characters (the activation of Agent Chilcott in particular has an introduction like a rap song, but that storyline completely fizzles out). In short, a bummer. But there's always Rebel Wilson taking her shirt off again, so...
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Sometimes good, but sometimes intentionally brutally disgusting. So disgusting, in fact, that it goes beyond disgust. And I deliberately played this comedy right after Animal with Belmondo to realize what kind of comedies were made back then and what kind of comedies are made today. And I have to admit that I much prefer the kind of comedies they madeback then. Now they only seem to be fighting for their moment in the sun by trying to fit as many disgusting things as possible on an eight-millimeter film.
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Some really juicy and delicious jokes (Radcliffe and Trump, "Do you have to shoot at everything?!") side by side with Mr. Cohen's overt sexual deviance and all manner of anal exploitation, which, while it makes you laugh heartily now and then, is life-threatening to eat with the film, watch it after a romantic dinner, and sometimes just watch it – things have been going downhill with Cohen and his originality since Borat, straight towards constantly surpassing the extremes of imaginary comedic (dis)taste, but on the other hand, after the terrible Bruno, Sacha manages to produce a story that holds together and, by engaging A-list actors, proves that the film world simply can’t find a more entertaining and flashy presentation of boorishness and imbecility anywhere else than his. A big thumbs up to Mark Strong, who also knows how to make a proper joke out of himself and obviously enjoyed this unprecedented ass-riding as much as I did for the most part. 65%
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I would be interested in knowing if Penélope Cruz knew when she signed on to this project that she would appear in the same film as Mark Strong’s testicles, Gabourey Sidibe’s crotch and a hectolitre of elephant ejaculate. The film succeeds in presenting all of the above without coming across as a random sequence of gags (though it’s not far from it) and without the punchline (always) consisting in the distastefulness or imbecility of the given joke. With his guileless rejection of what is proper in a civilised society, Cohen’s Nobby, proudly claiming to be English scum, fulfils a purpose similar to that of the earlier Ali G and Borat – he shows the pretence in which all intellectuals, petty bourgeois and snobs live, as they reveal their true face and true intentions when confronted with a man whom they despise too much to take seriously (among other things, this year’s American presidential election showed us what that can lead to). The other characters are (unintentionally) led to being exposed by Nobby, and the viewer is then (intentionally) led by the redneck jokes, which are drawn out to the point of absurdity. Sure, The Brothers Grimsby is very much a hit-or-miss affair, the editing could have been less frantic and the seriously depicted flashbacks (and the whole storyline about the importance of family) disrupt the pace and tone of the narrative, but I still found it funnier and more subversive than most mainstream comedies. The fourth star is for giving Donald Trump AIDS. 70%.
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Gallery (36)
Photo © Sony Pictures Entertainment
![The Brothers Grimsby - Photos - Jon-Jon Lockwood, Kyle Rowe, Claudia Adshead, Shaun Thomas, Rebel Wilson, Sacha Baron Cohen](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/160/492/160492129_04f78a.jpg)
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