Simply dim and grim

VACUOUS VULGARITY?Mark Stong and Sacha Baron Cohen star in ‘Grimsby’.

Cinema
Ciara Galvin

I’VE gone to a lot of bad films in my time, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen worse than ‘Grimsby’. Vulgar, crude and crass are just some of the words that come to mind when I think of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest offering.
Just to be clear, I enjoy a film with crude and crass humour as much as the next person. Some of my favourite films are of this type of comedy, the embarrassing humour you really shouldn’t laugh at. ‘Dumb and Dumber’ is a great example, selling a dead parakeet to a blind kid, Harry’s toilet scene … I love it. The difference between this and ‘Grimsby’ is that ‘Dumb and Dumber’ is intelligently written.
The empty cinema should have been enough of an omen, but I soldiered on.
‘Grimsby’ is a James Bond film, if James Bond lived in Albert Square and went to the Queen Vic for some ‘bevvies’ between missions.
The gist of the story, without giving too much away to anybody who would like to waste their time seeing it after reading this, is that it’s the reunion of two brothers separated in childhood.
Baron Cohen plays ‘Nobby’, while Mark Strong plays his long-lost brother, Sebastian, who is now an MI6 agent. Nobby has spent 28 years looking for his brother, and it becomes readily apparent that Sebastian would have been better off if his brother didn’t find him.
Nobby is a caricature of a typical English football hooligan. Sporting a Liam Gallagher haircut, Nobby is father to eleven children, including one called Skeletor, and also a grandfather to Gangnam Style; yes, his grandson is called Gangnam Style.
He and wife, Dawn (Rebel Wilson), must have been based on Harry Enfield’s characters ‘Wayne’ and ‘Waynetta’ with their gross public shows of affection and sloppy lifestyles.
Through a series of clumsy events orchestrated by Nobby, he and his little brother must partner up to form, you guessed it, an unlikely team to save the world. All of the action is set against the backdrop of ’90s songs like ‘Parklife’ and Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ (I get Knocked Down).
There is a host of cameos from some likely and unlikely actors. Penelope Cruz plays the evil Rhonda George, while US presidential candidate Donald Trump also makes an appearance. Baron Cohen’s own wife, Isla Fisher, also stars. At least Fisher has an excuse for her appearance in it, with it being her husband’s film, but you would be worried about Cruz’s decision to star in this.
There are some really crass scenes that did gain some laughs, in particular the opening, but after this it went down hill rapidly into the utterly bizarre.
Most of this film’s content can’t even be reviewed, that’s how odd it was. One scene in a national park in Capetown was hands down one of the most strange and disturbing I’ve ever watched. You’ll know it if you ever have the misfortune of seeing it.
Baron Cohen is an expert at shocking audiences. From ‘Borat’ to ‘Bruno’, there has been some, ah, ‘memorable’ movie moments, but at least they were written cleverly. Grimsby blatantly shocks for the sake of it. Maybe the football-hooligan scenes rubbed off on me, because after wasting 83 minutes of my life, I was so annoyed I could have head butted someone.