Its been ten years since Sacha Baron Cohen went Full Phenom withBorat.
Has he ever recovered?
But an actual screenplay didnt do 2012sThe Dictatorany favors.
Cohen was a presence.
He gave good paycheck inSweeney ToddandLes Miserables.
(He couldnt sing, but he wasnt alone.)
You expect a malcontent to go establishment, to hide behind makeup inAlice in Wonderlandsequels.
Cohen is Nobby Butcher, a football hooligan from working-class Grimsby.
Nobbys also got a hole in his heart.
As a child, he was separated from his brother.
That brother grew into Sebastian Graves, MI6 superspy, played by Mark Strong.
Strong is one of those British actors you might call Bond Adjacent.
Hes handsome, withdrawn, looks good killing people.
If you likedKingsman, you might not likeGrimsby; I sure hatedKingsman, and I sure lovedGrimsby.
Grimsby, by comparison, pairs Cohen with an ideal collaborator.
Like Cohen, Leterriers a Euro gone Hollywood.
Leterriers got that French thing where he doesnt mind when things look fake.
Maybe he prefers that.
Leterriers approach to filmed action mirrors Cohens approach to comedy: Scattershot, hyperkinetic, aggressively over-the-top.
Too-muchness is the problem, and the point.
Leterrier doesnt do steady, but theres a goofball grace to his staging.
(Understanding Leterrier means understanding that he loves martial arts but doesnt mind pretending Dave Franco knows karate.)
The whole action takes about a millisecond; Michael Bays been chasing a moment like that his whole career.
LeterriersChaoscombines perfectly with Cohens chaos.
It has one of the single most disgusting sequences in movie history.
(Suffice it to say: I have no more questions about elephant physiology.)
(The kitchen sink is implied.)
Rebel Wilson, Penelope Cruz, and Gabourey Sidibe swan in and out, playing their most hyperbolized selves.
The parading bad guys should feel more colorful, or at least somehow differentiated.
The movie takes the brothers snob-vs-slob backgrounds seriously.
Crucially, its Sebastian who seems unusual.
He might as well be an alien, or one of the Eternals fromZardoz.
God help me, I laughed.B+
