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| Baron Cohen’s Grimsby isn’t offensive – it’s worse than that | Baron Cohen’s Grimsby isn’t offensive – it’s worse than that |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| Tell people that you used to live in Grimsby and the conversation usually goes one of two ways. The first involves sniggering and fish jokes; the second, riffing oh-so-hilariously on the word “grim”. But now there’s a third, and it’s asking if you found Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy (imaginatively titled Grimsby) crassly offensive or a smart and affectionate social satire. | Tell people that you used to live in Grimsby and the conversation usually goes one of two ways. The first involves sniggering and fish jokes; the second, riffing oh-so-hilariously on the word “grim”. But now there’s a third, and it’s asking if you found Sacha Baron Cohen’s new comedy (imaginatively titled Grimsby) crassly offensive or a smart and affectionate social satire. |
| Related: Grimsby review – Sacha Baron Cohen's gags fall flat in cod-Bond caper | |
| The film’s anti-hero, Nobby, is a lagered-up benefits cheat with nine kids who (brace yourself for the smart social satire) turns out to be worth 10 of the establishment snobs who deem him scum. His hometown scenes are not exactly the stuff of tourist board dreams – although ironically, most of them were filmed in Tilbury in Essex. So Grimsby town gets the bad press but the economic benefit of a visiting film crew goes south; there’s black humour for you. | The film’s anti-hero, Nobby, is a lagered-up benefits cheat with nine kids who (brace yourself for the smart social satire) turns out to be worth 10 of the establishment snobs who deem him scum. His hometown scenes are not exactly the stuff of tourist board dreams – although ironically, most of them were filmed in Tilbury in Essex. So Grimsby town gets the bad press but the economic benefit of a visiting film crew goes south; there’s black humour for you. |
| Grimsby isn’t my hometown, but it was my first local newspaper patch and it still means a lot to me. My memories of living there are all good ones, and I admire its heroically stubborn refusal to go under in hard times. Leaving aside the awkwardness of a millionaire comedian rinsing its poverty for cheap laughs, the last thing it needs is anything that might put companies off relocating there and bringing jobs. | Grimsby isn’t my hometown, but it was my first local newspaper patch and it still means a lot to me. My memories of living there are all good ones, and I admire its heroically stubborn refusal to go under in hard times. Leaving aside the awkwardness of a millionaire comedian rinsing its poverty for cheap laughs, the last thing it needs is anything that might put companies off relocating there and bringing jobs. |
| But slightly to my surprise, I wasn’t really offended by this lazy, teenage, gross-out flick. Or not by the Grimsby bits, anyway. Spoiler alert: the scene in South Africa involving our hero, a sexually harassed black maid and a posh white South African beats anything else in the film hands down for offensiveness, yet with zero redeeming effort to make a satirical point about race. There’s the childish Aids jokes, and the fact that Paul Abbott’s Shameless did the whole challenging attitudes to chav culture thing infinitely better, and earlier, using wit and pathos where Grimsby relies on knob jokes. Ali G and even Borat were brilliantly subversive characters appealing both to 14-year-old boys and more sophisticated audiences, but Nobby can’t make the same leap. Mostly I was just mildly bored, occasionally repulsed (the elephant thing, Google it if you must), and ultimately chastened – although probably not in the way the film intends. | But slightly to my surprise, I wasn’t really offended by this lazy, teenage, gross-out flick. Or not by the Grimsby bits, anyway. Spoiler alert: the scene in South Africa involving our hero, a sexually harassed black maid and a posh white South African beats anything else in the film hands down for offensiveness, yet with zero redeeming effort to make a satirical point about race. There’s the childish Aids jokes, and the fact that Paul Abbott’s Shameless did the whole challenging attitudes to chav culture thing infinitely better, and earlier, using wit and pathos where Grimsby relies on knob jokes. Ali G and even Borat were brilliantly subversive characters appealing both to 14-year-old boys and more sophisticated audiences, but Nobby can’t make the same leap. Mostly I was just mildly bored, occasionally repulsed (the elephant thing, Google it if you must), and ultimately chastened – although probably not in the way the film intends. |
| It’s a shame because in the hands of a good writer, a strong sense of place can become almost another character on screen. The BBC police drama Happy Valley, set in and around Hebden Bridge, wouldn’t make sense anywhere else; it takes an area many think they know – a gentrified Yorkshire enclave of vegan cafes – and turns it inside out to reveal something hidden from visitors. (Its writer, Sally Wainwright, grew up nearby.) But Baron Cohen’s film all too often feels as if it’s taking what you think you know about somewhere and cheerfully regurgitating it, with a synthetic moral attached. It’s the work of a sympathetic tourist, not a native. | It’s a shame because in the hands of a good writer, a strong sense of place can become almost another character on screen. The BBC police drama Happy Valley, set in and around Hebden Bridge, wouldn’t make sense anywhere else; it takes an area many think they know – a gentrified Yorkshire enclave of vegan cafes – and turns it inside out to reveal something hidden from visitors. (Its writer, Sally Wainwright, grew up nearby.) But Baron Cohen’s film all too often feels as if it’s taking what you think you know about somewhere and cheerfully regurgitating it, with a synthetic moral attached. It’s the work of a sympathetic tourist, not a native. |
| What’s odd is that if he wanted to make a point about snobbery he could have set this anywhere, really. Anywhere with boarded-up windows, teenagers pushing prams, beer-bellied men spending money they don’t have in dismal pubs. All that’s easily found in Grimsby. But if you know where to look you can find it in parts of Swindon, where I watched the film, or indeed London, although admittedly people don’t snigger so reliably at their names. Smarter still would have been to make this an everyman comedy, leaving the location as geographically vague as the cast’s northern-ish accents. | What’s odd is that if he wanted to make a point about snobbery he could have set this anywhere, really. Anywhere with boarded-up windows, teenagers pushing prams, beer-bellied men spending money they don’t have in dismal pubs. All that’s easily found in Grimsby. But if you know where to look you can find it in parts of Swindon, where I watched the film, or indeed London, although admittedly people don’t snigger so reliably at their names. Smarter still would have been to make this an everyman comedy, leaving the location as geographically vague as the cast’s northern-ish accents. |
| But no identifiable location equals no local outrage, and thus no PR clickbait. No town worthies protesting, no juicy controversy of the kind that gets otherwise unremarkable schlock for teenage boys splashed all over the papers and entices adults in. | But no identifiable location equals no local outrage, and thus no PR clickbait. No town worthies protesting, no juicy controversy of the kind that gets otherwise unremarkable schlock for teenage boys splashed all over the papers and entices adults in. |
| Leaving the cinema, I was reminded of nothing so much as the fury reliably whipped up locally whenever the poverty porn documentaries Benefits Street or Skint (which has already visited Grimsby) choose a new location. Anger fades eventually, but the warm glow of publicity remains. Who’d have heard of the programme if we hadn’t been so expertly offended in advance? Yet we rise to it every time. Perhaps the real moral of Grimsby is never to take such nonsense more seriously than it deserves. | Leaving the cinema, I was reminded of nothing so much as the fury reliably whipped up locally whenever the poverty porn documentaries Benefits Street or Skint (which has already visited Grimsby) choose a new location. Anger fades eventually, but the warm glow of publicity remains. Who’d have heard of the programme if we hadn’t been so expertly offended in advance? Yet we rise to it every time. Perhaps the real moral of Grimsby is never to take such nonsense more seriously than it deserves. |