Grimsby * * * *

Perverse, dirty, sick, crude... Basically  hilarious!

This film is sick.  It makes fun of poor people, children in wheelchairs, people in third world countries. It makes jokes at the expense of gays and fat people. It celebrates drunken debauchery, it thinks manipulating your children for social benefits is funny, it resolves conflict with guns, in short it has very few jokes or situations which won’t shock, appall or disgust you.  It’s no wonder it has received so many negative reviews.

Personally I thought it was fucking hilarious.

There is a most telling scene near the beginning where the children are crowded on the couch in their council house watching Southpark. So there’s your clue.  If you find Southpark funny, you’ll probably wet yourself over this. If Southpark offends you, or you don’t get it, then you’d probably better stay away from Grimsby.

But with bad men being stopped by throwing a boy in a wheelchair at them, with men hiding in an elephant’s vagina only to find the elephant is up for a gang-bang leaving them  pummelled by huge elephant dicks and covered in elephant semen, with close-ups of one brother sucking the testicles of another brother, with people being killed at their moment of redemption…you get the idea..

Really, it's just so extreme, so ridiculous, it’s like the world has become unstitched.  It’s hysterical!

Sacha Baron-Cohen gave us the excellent Borat and Bruno and he’s not let us down with this new character Nobby. He’s a die hard England football supporter.  He lives in a welfare supported town which is an utter shambles and everyone in town is pretty much the same - they live for booze and football, and they breed like rabbits.  

Nobby’s long lost brother Sebastian (Mark Strong) was raised by posh people after the boys were orphaned. Now he is a commander with MI6, James Bond style. The brothers meet again at a critical moment for Sebastian.  Due to Nobby’s clumsy interference MI6 decide Sebastian must be eliminated for compromising an operation.  But Sebastian is aware of a global threat that must be stopped even though he can no longer communicate with MI6.

In Bond style, the brothers travel from London to Africa to Chile to stop a crazy actress, played by Penelope Cruz, from killing everyone.

Like Southpark, it’s mad, crazy, impossible, shockingly crude and forces you to laugh at things you should not be laughing at. Yet you do, even though you know you are no less a good person than those who are disgusted - which invites psychological self-examination for both sides I suppose.

Kudos to those brave enough to get involved with Sacha Baron-Cohen in  this hysterical disgrace, especially Mark Strong, Rebel Wilson, Gabourey Sidibe and Penelope Cruz.  I am sure, like the elephants, none were harmed in the making of this 100 minutes of unbridled madness.