The Brothers Grimsby

A typically erratic Sacha Baron Cohen comedy, The Brothers Grimsby follows Baron Cohen’s Nobby, a less-than-bright football enthusiast, as he’s reunited with his long lost brother (Mark Strong’s Sebastian) and subsequently embroiled in Sebastian’s efforts to thwart a global terrorism plot. There’s really not a whole lot contained within The Brothers Grimsby worth getting excited about, as the movie remains pitched at the level of a barely-adequate timekiller for the duration of its mercifully brief running time – with the mediocre atmosphere perpetuated by an almost total lack of genuine belly laughs. (It certainly doesn’t help that the film has been suffused with a number of misguided, unfunny sketches, including a grim and downright cringeworthy sequence involving Nobby and Sebastian’s efforts to hide amongst a herd of elephants.) Filmmaker Louis Leterrier’s typically frenetic approach ensures that the movie possesses a curiously slapdash feel, with Baron Cohen’s penchant for improvisation essentially heightening the movie’s less-than-polished atmosphere. There’s little doubt, then, that The Brothers Grimsby‘s extremely mild success is due mostly to Baron Cohen’s enthusiastic performance and a smattering of chuckle-worthy lines and interludes, and it is, in the end, clear that the movie falls right in line with Baron Cohen’s relentlessly middling run of less-than-brilliant comedies (eg Bruno, The Dictator, etc, etc).

**1/2 out of ****