Grims­by

When Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat char­ac­ter was first trailed on TV, there was an amaz­ing sketch which saw this unre­con­struct­ed, Kaza­khstan-based nin­com­poop meet­ing with the bray­ing rah-rahs of the Hen­ley Regat­ta. One lengthy, cir­cuitous con­ver­sa­tion chron­i­cled his attempts to com­pre­hend a species as-yet-unknown to him: the hippopotamus.

As he fires ques­tions at an unsus­pect­ing and increas­ing­ly irate gent, list­less­ly try­ing to under­stand how a hip­po is anatom­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent to a pig, the con­ver­sa­tion hits peak absur­di­ty. The shot lingers on, refus­ing to cut. The rea­son we laugh isn’t because of Borat or what he’s say­ing, it’s the fact that he’s clev­er­ly back­ing his tar­get into a cor­ner, expos­ing prej­u­dice and arro­gance. Not in a spite­ful way, just gen­tly dig­ging, dig­ging and dig­ging some more. And we all know that dig­ging is hard work.

If Borat and its spo­rad­i­cal­ly bril­liant fol­low-up, Brüno, were Cohen’s com­e­dy behe­moths, equiv­a­lent to some­thing like Austin Pow­ers, then his lat­est work, Grims­by, is his answer to The Love Guru. Jokes fall flat with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty, like fire­works plunged into the puck­ered anus­es of so many poor north­ern wastrels so as to impede their flight into glo­ry. The taper is lit, the sparks fizz, and then… a whimper.

Cohen is an incred­i­ble live come­di­an – some­one who is able to react to con­stant­ly alter­ing sur­round­ings. He is ener­gised by sur­prise, nev­er los­ing his cool or drop­ping his intri­cate­ly-for­mu­lat­ed façade. What he does is method act­ing in the clas­si­cal sense, immers­ing him­self in the pub­lic and pass­ing him­self off as a real person.

As a com­e­dy char­ac­ter actor, Cohen stinks to high heav­en. When mak­ing movies like Grims­by, his skill set doesn’t gel with the frame­work around it. Indeed, it’s phys­i­cal­ly repelled by it. His char­ac­ter here is called Nob­by Butch­er, a wide-eyed lout proud to live in rel­a­tive penury in the north­ern town of Grims­by, which is depict­ed as some kind of gate­way to Hell. He pines for the return of his broth­er, from who he was cru­el­ly sep­a­rat­ed dur­ing youth.

Sebas­t­ian (Mark Strong), was adopt­ed by wealthy south­ern­ers and his alter­na­tive life path lead him to death-defy­ing black ops for MI6. The mis-matched pair are thrown togeth­er in hap­haz­ard fash­ion and are forced to team up to save the world. And though it may read like that last sen­tence was copied-and-past­ed from an offi­cial press release, there real­ly is no oth­er way to encap­su­late the film’s drab lack of nar­ra­tive ambition.

The film is direct­ed by Louis Leter­ri­er, who is best known for his work on the first two Trans­porter films. Grims­by styles itself as an ​‘action com­e­dy’, and what it reveals is those two gener­ic terms have absolute­ly no place sit­ting side by side. Action requires fast cut­ting, swift cam­era move­ments, sprint­ing pace, no qui­et beats allow­ing time to catch the breath. Com­e­dy is about the awk­ward­ness of dead air, the reac­tion, the moment after the moment. It’s lan­guorous, slow, con­sid­ered. It’s about milk­ing a tiny nuance. The two forms are polar oppo­sites: they can­cel one anoth­er out. (A very rare excep­tion to this rule would be a film like Mar­tin Brest’s Mid­night Run). So with Grims­by we get nei­ther the thrilling flu­en­cy of action nor the del­i­cate chore­og­ra­phy of comedy.

By its limp final stretch, it attempts to save face with a vol­ley of cheap speechi­fy­ing hav­ing spent an hour sim­ply recy­cling pover­ty porn stereo­types. It pur­ports to want to rein­vig­o­rate the tor­tured nobil­i­ty of the Eng­lish work­ing class­es (“scum”). Yet instead of try­ing to mine for any kind of empa­thy, worth or human­i­ty, the film’s mes­sage is that the Eng­lish work­ing class­es are slather­ing, lagered-up, drugged-up sav­ages whose only use for a pro­phy­lac­tic involves weapon­is­ing it with the addi­tion of a snook­er ball. We should cher­ish them because they are vile, not because we’re mis­con­stru­ing that vile­ness for some­thing that’s worse than it is. Grims­by makes Wayne and Waynet­ta Slob look like Molière.