Review, Crudeness Reaches New Heights in, The Brothers Grimsby

Review, Crudeness Reaches New Heights in, The Brothers Grimsby

The Brothers Grimsby‏

Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't quite know when to stop

Not long ago, Mark Strong wowed Broadway audiences as longshoreman Eddie Carbone in a stylized, sophisticated production of Arthur Miller’s revered, tragic chestnut A View from the Bridge, a role in which he proved his mastery of the thespian’s craft. Now, you can see him inside an elephant’s vagina. We really do live in amazing times

But you can learn a lot about an actor from how he conducts himself inside an elephant’s chamber of forbidden secrets, and Strong acquits himself with aplomb in The Brothers Grimsby, in which he plays Sebastian, a suave MI6 agent reunited with his long-lost brother, a working-class yobbo named Nobby, played by Sacha Baron Cohen

Nine out of ten gags in this crude pub crawl of a comedy are indefensible

 Maybe ten out of ten. Tragically, perhaps, I laughed anyway: It’s so hard to know what to laugh at anymore, and what it’s OK to laugh at. But the sheer, stupid outrageousness of The Brothers Grimsby wore me down into a kind of trance

 In an early scene, Baron Cohen’s Nobby admonishes one of the tiniest of his nine children—or is it 11?—not to smoke. “I thought you just meant crack!” says the miniature hooligan-in-training. “No,” Nobby responds solemnly, “cigarettes too. At your age you should just be vaping