Silly, lewd, tasteless . . . Borat star’s at it again
GETTING caught in just your Y-fronts and a dirty polo neck, surrounded by scantily clad beauties, would be scandalous for most stars.
But this was simply Sacha Baron Cohen in his latest outrageous disguise at the premiere of his new film Grimsby in London’s Leicester Square last night.
The comedian, 44, whose previous creations included Ali G and Borat, was in character as Nobby, a football hooligan who teams up with his suave secret agent brother Sebastian, played by Mark Strong. The Cambridge-educated star completed his look with a fake gun, a beer can and extreme sideburns. His wife, actress Isla Fisher, 40, was glamorously dressed in a stunning green gown – but played up to the antics, feeding her husband chips on the red carpet.
Here the Mail’s film critic BRIAN VINER gives his verdict on Baron Cohen’s latest offering.
Sacha Baron cohen’s exceedingly silly, incorrigibly lewd, intermittently hilarious new film is being released in the US as The Brothers Grimsby. Presumably that’s because the name Grimsby does not, over there, evoke fish, economic hardship, and more fish, as it does here.
But if its US title creates expectations of some kind of fairy tale, then in a very warped way they might be realised. It’s not a fairy tale that old Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm even in one of their darker phases would have created, but it does have good v evil (as well as Grimsby Town v Barnsley), plus variations on the rags-to-riches and happyever-after themes.
Baron cohen (who co-wrote and produced, although Frenchman Louis Leterrier directs) plays Norman ‘Nobby’ Butcher, a slowwitted Grimsby father of nine with a hairstyle modelled on Liam Gallagher circa 1995, or for that matter, Liam Gallagher now. Nobby is married to the highly-sexed Dawn ( the australian Rebel Wilson, whose Lincolnshire vowels are actually a sight more accurate than Baron cohen’s).
When he’s not collecting benefits or teaching his children to smoke, Nobby devotes part of his time to being a football hooligan, and the rest of it trying to track down his long-lost younger brother Sebastian, from whom he was separated as a child when Sebastian was adopted by a wealthy couple from down south.
Sebastian (nicely played by Mark Strong) has grown up to become one of the British secret service’s top assassins. When Nobby finds out his whereabouts, the unlikely pair join forces, travelling to South africa and then chile to thwart the murderous plans of a dastardly organisation called Maelstrom. ‘Meet the head of the biggest crime syndicate in the world,’ Sebastian tells Nobby solemnly, when finally they come face to face with their deadly foe. ‘What, she runs FIFA?’ says Nobby.
That might well be the most sophisticated joke in a film which, in characteristic Baron cohen style, pushes firmly at, and frequently clean through, the boundaries of taste.
LAVATORIAL humour is the least of it. There is a scene involving an elephant that cannot possibly be described in a family newspaper. and some grotesquely off- colour humour at the expense of harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.
But the cast – which also includes Penelope cruz, somewhat improbably rubbing shoulders with Ricky Tomlinson and Johnny vegas – have plenty of infectious, knockabout, semi-improvised fun. Despite some decent football gags, it’s not in the same league as Baron cohen’s similarly tasteless but significantly funnier 2006 film Borat. Yet the audience at last night’s world premiere in London lapped it up.
how it will go down in north-east Lincolnshire is another matter. There have already been complaints from the good folk of Grimsby – otherwise known as Grimbarians – that the film seems likely to besmirch even further the reputation of a town already at the top of a 2016 list of the worst places to live in the UK.
So they have launched a pre-emptive PR strike, led by local actor Thomas Turgoose, who played Shaun in the 2006 film This Is England and its Tv spin-off.
‘Yes, it’s a ****hole,’ he has said, ‘but it’s our ****hole.’
I’ve heard more ringing declarations of civic pride. Besides, maybe Grimbarians should embrace rather than distance themselves from this film. If nothing else, it will put Grimsby on the map in the United States. ÷ Grimsby opens tomorrow nationwide.