An increasingly pathetic Sacha Baron Cohen plays Nobby Butcher, mutton-chopped dole cheat and devout “Grimsby United” fan with 11 kids and pussy-farting Rebel Wilson as his “totally fit” wife, Dawn Grobham. Cohen chose the small coastal town of Grimsby to poke “fun” at his latest target: Britain’s north, historically the losing side in that country’s class wars, haha. But if Nobby's a lout, he's also very proud of hearth and home, in the manner of most cartoonishly rendered proles, and he nurses real heartache over his brother Sebastian, missing for 28 years. Turns out that Sebastian is actually a hyper-competent MI6 killer, played by Mark Strong in the manner of most cartoonishly rendered MI6 killers. When Nobby tracks Sebastian down, causing him to accidentally shoot the head of the World Health Organization during a highly sensitive op, the reunited brothers set off on a mission that takes them to South Africa, the World Cup finals in Chile, and—in one of the film’s most doggedly offensive set pieces—the inside of an elephant’s uterus during a pachydermal gang bang. Timing-impaired direction by Louis Letterier (The Transporter) further sinks a trail of lazy gags provided by Cohen and his somnambulant writing team, while their targets, crowd-pleasing Donald Trump zinger aside, remain drearily obvious: AIDS, fat people, crippled children (with AIDS), pedophiles, Liam Gallagher, FIFA, more AIDS.

The Brothers Grimsby has its moments. If you can overlook the fact that its even more humiliating for Gabourey Sidibe than her role in Precious, there's inspired silliness behind a scene in which Nobby deploys a terrible Sean Connery impression to seduce an African maid. But the claim, per Borat and Brüno, that Cohen's comic thing is to uncover everyone else’s prejudices, audience included, makes no sense here. He’s a privately educated Cambridge graduate, now financed by Hollywood. A tacked-on message about family and working-class solidarity can’t conceal the casual insensitivity of Cohen’s privileged POV. And who, anyway, is this film's collection of violated arseholes and traumatic man-on-man teabaggings really supposed to appeal to? Talk about bottom-feeding. As for Cohen’s vaunted role immersion: his comedy hero Peter Sellers was a hateful man who still managed to capture provincial British oiks with a grain of sincere affection. And he always, at the very least, got the fucking accent right.

Georgia Straight, March 2016