The Brothers Grimsby

The Brothers Grimsby is the latest 2016 comedy that proves when it comes to vulgarity and stupidity, there is no such thing as too much.  It started off with Dirty Grandpa, which was a failed comedy that built itself around Robert DeNiro telling lame off-color jokes, and insulting everyone's manhood.  Next, we had Zoolander 2, where the usually smart and likable Ben Stiller was forced to play so dumb that he got no laughs whatsoever.  Now we have this movie, which features a scene where the two main characters are forced to climb up into an elephant's rear end in order to escape some bad guys who are chasing them.  When the villains leave and our heroes are ready to get out of their unfortunate hiding place, a horny male elephant comes along, and inserts its massive sexual organ into the space where the main characters are hiding, leading to graphic close up shots of the film's stars being slapped in the face by the intruding organ.

You just never know what you're going to see when you're at the movies!  Believe it or not, this is not just a gross out gag, but becomes integral to the plot near the end.  The two stars in question who find themselves in this predicament are Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong.  Both are fine actors, but are cast to the winds here by a mostly witless screenplay, which was co-written by Cohen.   It's intended to be a spy spoof, but it doesn't try to find any humor in the genre.  Instead, it takes aim at the poor and uneducated of England, the handicapped, AIDS, and celebrities like Daniel Radcliffe, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump.  Oh, and it also is obsessed with gags concerning anal cavities.  Besides the one involving the elephant, it also has a running gag about how Cohen finds himself in situations with a lighted firework stuck up his nether regions.  Again, believe it or not, but this also is not just a gross out gag, and becomes important to the plot near the end.

The two play brothers who were close as children, but then they became orphans and were forced to be separated.  Cohen is Nobby, an alcoholic and uneducated working class family man with an obese wife (Rebel Wilson) and 11 children, who are all named after what Nobby was watching on TV at the time the child was conceived, so they have names like "Skeletor" and "Django Unchained".  Strong plays Sebastian, who grew up to be a secret agent, and is on the trail of a criminal organization that is plotting to wipe out most of the world's population during a soccer match with a deadly virus.  Nobby has been searching for his missing brother for nearly 30 years, and finally finds him at a fundraiser where Sebastian is just about to foil an assassination attempt.  Unfortunately, Nobby gets in the way, the assassination goes off, and Sebastian is now blamed for the murder.  The two reunited brothers must now work together to not only clear Sebastian's name, but also save the world.

I'm making the movie sound like it's actually about something, but honestly, the plot is merely a hook for a series of sexual and anal gags.  But there is a laziness to it that seems to indicate the writers threw in shock value in order to spice up what they knew was a lousy script.  For example, in one scene, Sebastian has been shot in the groin (naturally) with a poison tip dart.  Now Nobby must suck the poison out of his brother's massive and bloated testicle, or else Sebastian will die.  Naturally, while this is going on, some of Nobby's bar friends come walking in, and see what they're doing.  The thing is, the movie is so incompetent, it forgets to have the friends react or do anything.  They kind of stop, and one of them takes out a phone in order to snap a photo, but that's it.  It simply stops at having the friends walk in, but it doesn't bother to carry on and possibly give Nobby and Sebastian a funny way to try to explain to the guys what they were doing.  It feels like a good chunk of the scene is missing.

This is a common practice in The Brothers Grimsby, as numerous scenes are either cut short or have no pay off at all.  The plot also jumps around with little rhyme or reason, and the editing is spotty and sporadic.  It's obvious that this movie was much longer at one point, but out of desperation, it was trimmed down to a very brief 83 minutes.  It's not that I wanted to see more of the movie, mind you.  In fact, the short running time is the most merciful thing about it.  It's just plain to see that the filmmakers knew they had a dud on their hands, and hacked it to pieces before it went into wide release.  In its final form, the movie resembles a jumbled series of scenes and jokes that barely connect, and leave the audience confused.  Just what did they think they were doing when they made this?  I understand that Sacha Baron Cohen enjoys using shock humor, and has used it to good effect in some of his past comedies.  But those movies also had elements of satire to go with it.  This is simply a limp farce that never builds any comedic energy. 

There are a lot of good and likable actors in this, like Penelope Cruz, Isla Fisher, Gabourey Sidibe and Ian McShane.  Unfortunately, most of these are walk on roles at best, or they're forced to just stand around and not contribute much.  If you have the money to hire talent like this, shouldn't you give them something to do?  This is a mystifying movie.  It feels unfinished and rushed, but most of all, it just kind of made me feel angry and restless.

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