--- title: 'The Brothers Grimsby' Review: A Crude, Crazy Spy Thriller description: Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't quite know when to stop canonical: https://time.com/4254223/review-sacha-baron-cohen-brothers-grimsby/ author: Stephanie Zacharek article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-11T22:27:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:00:17.150Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Review: Crudeness Reaches New Heights in 'The Brothers Grimsby' og:description: Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't quite know when to stop og:url: https://time.com/4254223/review-sacha-baron-cohen-brothers-grimsby/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9686c39a4ca36eee/69888a733c163956fb45c60d/brothers-grimsby.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: brothers-grimsby og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Review: Crudeness Reaches New Heights in 'The Brothers Grimsby' twitter:description: Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't quite know when to stop twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9686c39a4ca36eee/69888a733c163956fb45c60d/brothers-grimsby.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Review: Crudeness Reaches New Heights in _The Brothers Grimsby_ > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Mar 11, 2016 10:27 PM UTC  Sacha Baron Cohen in The Brothers Grimsby. Sacha Baron Cohen in The Brothers Grimsby.Columbia Pictures  by [Stephanie Zacharek](https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Film Critic Mar 11, 2016 10:27 PM UTC Not long ago, Mark Strong wowed Broadway audiences as longshoreman Eddie Carbone in a stylized, sophisticated production of Arthur Miller’s revered, tragic chestnut _A View from the Bridge,_ a role in which he proved his mastery of the thespian’s craft. Now, you can see him inside an elephant’s vagina. We really do live in amazing times. But you can learn a lot about an actor from how he conducts himself inside an elephant’s chamber of forbidden secrets, and Strong acquits himself with aplomb in _The Brothers Grimsby,_ in which he plays Sebastian, a suave MI6 agent reunited with his long-lost brother, a working-class yobbo named Nobby, played by [Sacha Baron Cohen](http://time.com/4254479/sacha-baron-cohen-roles-pictures/). Nine out of ten gags in this crude pub crawl of a comedy are indefensible. Maybe ten out of ten. Tragically, perhaps, I laughed anyway: It’s so hard to know what to laugh at anymore, and what it’s OK to laugh at. But the sheer, stupid outrageousness of _The Brothers Grimsby_ wore me down into a kind of trance. In an early scene, Baron Cohen’s Nobby admonishes one of the tiniest of his nine children—or is it 11?—not to smoke. “I thought you just meant crack!” says the miniature hooligan-in-training. “No,” Nobby responds solemnly, “cigarettes too. At your age you should just be vaping.” Making jokes about little children and smoking! The world is surely ending. I kept a tally of gags that I thought might be offensive to someone, somewhere, even though I couldn’t be sure they were offensive to me. My notes became a scribbled mess of quizzical adjectives, arrows and question marks. “Homophobic?” “Racist?” “Insensitive toward those who are overweight?” “Possibly misogynist but only against elephants?” OK, I didn’t actually write that down, but you get the idea. Usually, Baron Cohen (also one of the movie’s writers) goes too far. But in comedy, how do you know when to stop, when pushing a joke is often the very thing that could make it work? It has all become very confusing. ### The Many Faces of Sacha Baron Cohen  Sacha Baron Cohen as Ali G in Ali G Indahouse, 2002. Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection  Sacha Baron Cohen as King Julien XIII in Madagascar, 2005. DreamWorks Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection  Sacha Baron Cohen as Jean Girard in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, 2006. Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection  Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 2006. 20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection  Sacha Baron Cohen as Signor Adolfo Pirelli in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 2007. DreamWorks Pictures  Sacha Baron Cohen as Brüno Gehard in Brüno, 2009. Universal Pictures  Sacha Baron Cohen as Inspector Gustav in Hugo, 2011. Paramount Pictures  Sacha Baron Cohen as Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen in The Dictator, 2012. Paramount Pictures  Sacha Baron Cohen as Thénardier in Les Misérables, 2012. Laurie Sparham—Universal Pictures  Sacha Baron Cohen as Norman "Nobby" Butcher in The Brothers Grimsby, 2016. Columbia Pictures  Sacha Baron Cohen as Time in Alice Through the Looking Glass, 2016. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Yet the spirit of _The Brothers Grimsby_ is weirdly generous, even if Baron Cohen can’t always hold things together. (The director is Louis Leterrier, who gave us the first two _Transporter_ movies.) The plot is silly beyond belief: After messing up one of Sebastian’s missions, Nobby joins with his brother to do spy stuff, leaving his beloved wife, Dawn (Rebel Wilson), the mother of his many children, back home in their disheveled Grimsby flat. Clearly, he likes a woman with a little heft to her. That’s why, while doing spy stuff in South Africa, when he’s told to search a hotel lobby for a “gorgeous” woman, he completely overlooks the slim blonde in the slinky number and makes a beeline for a hotel maid (Gabourey Sidibe) in a cotton shirtwaist. The joke doesn’t quite connect, but Baron Cohen is at least trying for something: Nobby is regular in every way, and proud of it, a champion of the underclass. Yet he doesn’t see the world in quite the way everyone else does. He’s a creature of big, brawny appetites but also of surprising sensitivity, a visionary with a beer gut. Then again, there’s that moment where an enraptured Nobby fires a gun for the first time, joyously killing people right and left while the theme from _The Great Escape_ toodles in the background. It’s wild and over-the-top, though Baron Cohen also tosses in an author’s-message line about how wonderful it feels to have so much power and feel no culpability. Baron Cohen is thinking every minute, even when his id is going full-throttle. Not all of what he does works. In fact, if you’re looking for a thinking-person’s comedy, _none_ of _The Brothers Grimsby_ works. It’s all about giving yourself over to anarchy, and watching tall, stalwart Mark Strong play the straight man (wonderfully) to Baron Cohen’s disorderly yet oddly innocent ruffian. Just remember, though: Where there’s elephant vagina, there’s elephant… You have been warned. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4254223/review-sacha-baron-cohen-brothers-grimsby/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4254223/review-sacha-baron-cohen-brothers-grimsby/"},"headline":"Review: Crudeness Reaches New Heights in The Brothers Grimsby","datePublished":"2016-03-11T22:27:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:00:17.150Z","description":"Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't quite know when to stop","url":"https://time.com/4254223/review-sacha-baron-cohen-brothers-grimsby/","keywords":["movies","Movie"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9686c39a4ca36eee/69888a733c163956fb45c60d/brothers-grimsby.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Stephanie Zacharek","jobTitle":"Film Critic","url":"https://time.com/author/stephanie-zacharek/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9686c39a4ca36eee/69888a733c163956fb45c60d/brothers-grimsby.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"brothers-grimsby","caption":"Sacha Baron Cohen in The Brothers Grimsby.","creditText":"Columbia Pictures","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4254223/review-sacha-baron-cohen-brothers-grimsby/","name":"Review: Crudeness Reaches New Heights in The Brothers Grimsby"}}]}] ```