The Brothers Grimsby

Yeah…so this was terrible.

The Brothers Grimsby opens with a sex scene that made me laugh.  It wasn’t a big laugh, but it did surprise me.  Then the next scene began with one of the main characters talking to his nine or so children, and every “joke” stomped a deeper pit in my stomach.  I never want to judge a film based off it’s opening minutes, but I’m also of the opinion that a story should grab you by the throat (funny bone in this case) and show you that you’re in good hands.  The Brothers Grimsby took me out of the cradle, and dropped me directly on my head.

Then it spent 90 minutes kicking me in the ribs and telling me to pretend I was in pain from laughing.  In reality, I was just in pain.

I laugh at ridiculous things.  A bunch of hamsters eating popsicles in Zootopia made me laugh as much as the Coen Brothers did in this year’s Hail Caesar!.  And this film’s star, Sacha Baron Cohen, has made me laugh as hard as anyone in the past.  The scene from Borat when he gets into a naked fight with Ken Davitian, made me laugh so hard that I had to look away from screen so I could focus on breathing.  I understand that his humor can rub some people the wrong way (in some cases I would agree), but his fearless comedic ambition has always been admirable.  Some of the best jokes in his career are earned out of shock, but that doesn’t make them lazy.  Comedy that makes you laugh is never lazy.

Which is why The Brothers Grimsby is so awful.  It makes jokes that are supposed to be shocking because of their content, but they fail at being funny because of the joke. It tries to capitalize on current events like a South Park episode which is a mistake for many reasons.  When a television shows like South Park uses timely humor, it feels like a natural progression because that’s what that show has done for it’s entire life.  Doing that kind of humor in a film is a difficult thing, because it looks like you’re trying to capitalize on something instead of telling a story with relevant humor.   It looks even worse when those jokes call attention to themselves, such as an early one here about Bill Cosby.  What’s worse is that each of these jokes feel tacked on, as if they were added in post-production.

The plot of The Brothers Grimsby revolves around two brothers played by Cohen and Mark Strong…..

You know what?  It doesn’t matter.  Is that hypocritical of me?  Maybe, but I’m also serious.  It doesn’t matter.

The film is an action/comedy with the action poorly staged by Director Louis Leterrier (The Transporter, Clash of The Titans), as he apparently thought choosing an eight year old with ADHD to edit everything he caught while shaking his camera was a good idea.  That’s all I can really blame him for though, because I’m sure Cohen is the one who handled the comedic aspect of the film.  I’ll note the staging of two comedic sequences, which I’m going to spoil here because it’s your own fault if you still want to see this, are so intent on grossing the audience out that they forget to be funny.  The first sees Mark Strong’s character get poison shot into one of his testicles, leaving Cohen’s character having to suck it out.  We basically see Strong teabag Cohen in full pubic hair on balls detail.  The second sequence sees Cohen and Strong hiding in an Elephant’s vagina from the bad guys.  Another elephant has sex with said female, leaving our heroes having to jerk-off the male from the inside of the vagina, ending in Strong getting a full blown elephant facial and Cohen getting elephant semen up his ass. The truth is that none of this grossed me out. It did something worse.  It bored me.

The film also tries to make a half-assed statement about class structure in England, but it does so in a way it does everything else.

And that way is not well.

Grade: “F”**k me.