Two brothers reunite to stop a gang of brutal crime lords, while re-establishing their loving relationship as “The Brothers Grimsby”. Written by Comedic chameleon Sacha Baron Cohen, the film stars his latest look of gut- busting delight. Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen), a sweet but dimwitted English football hooligan, reunites with his long-lost brother Sebastian (Mark Strong), a deadly MI6 agent, to prevent a massive global terror attack and prove that behind every great spy is an embarrassing sibling. Nobby has everything a man from Grimsby could want, including 11 children and the most gorgeous girlfriend in the northeast of England (Rebel Wilson). There’s only one thing missing: his little brother, Sebastian, who Nobby has spent 28 years searching for after they were separated as kids. Nobby sets off to reunite with Sebastian, unaware that not only is his brother MI6’s deadliest assassin, but he’s just uncovered plans for an imminent global terrorist attack. On the run and wrongfully accused, Sebastian realizes that if he is going to save the world, he will need the help of its biggest idiot. “The Brothers Grimsby” is rated R for strong crude sexual content, graphic nudity, violence, language, and some drug use.

What do you say about a movie that pokes fun at such topics as pedophilia, sexual abuse involving rape, incest, and a five minute scene involving two cows that gets as visual as you can imagine? You say that Sacha Baron Cohen has reached the very bottom in his once prosperous career. That’s not to say that Cohen’s films have ever been the beacon for class, but at least in films like “Borat” or “Bruno” the joke is pointed towards everyone else. Those films offer great social commentary on how we treat the gay community, as well as foreigners when it plays against our fears. What “The Brothers Grimsby” does is offer 78 minutes of truly detestable filth that never resignated even a single laugh from inside of me. Sasha is simply too far along in his career for roles like this. We saw just how radiant he can be in films like “Hugo”, and yet he keeps going back to trash like this.

The film’s comedy touches on every single gross-out factor that it can reach for in it’s grasp. The jokes last for FAR too long, and its evidence that the film’s plot and the development of its characters was the least important thing to Cohen. So much happens within the first twenty minutes of the film, and it’s done in a fast-forward method of storytelling, never allowing the audience to slow down and soak everything in. You can see every gag (great word) coming from a mile away, and because it’s predictable, the joke carries on and on. I found myself praying for an edit button many times in my showing. The material constantly stays at an intelligence level of a five-year-old, full of disgusting results for every setup. There is a scene that I kind of touched on already earlier in the review that is so gross that I constantly considered walking out. If anyone has seen “Freddy Got Fingered”, you’ll know the kind of level I am talking about with humor that consistently feels like you missed the clever punch line about the joke.

Immediatly, I noticed that for a movie that centers around England, the film’s actors portray quite possibly the worst English accents I have come across. Mark Strong is the only one who sounds accurate in his vocal portrayal, and he should since he comes from that country. Cohen too is british, yet his accent is stuck somewhere between Australia and Scotland. This pales in comparison though to whatever accent Rebel Wilson was trying to perform. I almost wish the movie would’ve added in an Australian history to her character, but she’s in the movie for so little, so who cares?

Screen time is also lacking for other big name actors who were in the film. Most notably, Isla Fischer is reduced to a desk job, with a romantic chemistry for Strong’s character. This plot device comes out of nowhere, and it feels like scenes or a backstory is missing to make their reliance on one another believable. Gabourey Sidibe is in one scene for the entire movie. They need her for fat jokes (Hardy har har), so there’s nothing else for her character once that’s done. Hell, Penelope Cruz is the mastermind vilain of the movie, and she’s in the film at the beginning and the end. They only bring her back when it’s appropriate to the plot. The film is so out of touch with its audience that I was actually rooting for Cruz’s terrorist character after I heard her motivation for doing what she did.

The action scenes are solid for a comedy film. There’s a lot of nice sequences that really pack a punch with sound editing and mixing. It’s all for short though, as the artistic delivery of each scene is shot so poorly. When the characters run, we are subject to the very same running camera style that aggravates me in films like these. It makes it so hard to register the kinds of things action on-screen, while forcing the audience to rub their eyes in agony repeatedly. This is made even more evident in the opening scene of the film that had a POV style of camera work for a shootout scene. This problem is what worries me about the upcoming “Hardcore Henry”, but that’s another story for another day.

“The Brothers Grimsby” clobbers viewers over the head with a steady stream of Sacha Baron Cohen’s edgy not-for-all humor, but too many gags hit the wrong side of the line between audacious and desperate to ever warrant a watchable experience. Cohen should be very careful with his next movie role. The potential is slowly slipping away for one of Hollywood’s better character actors, and that is perhaps the biggest shame with this spy spoof smut.

2/10