How much mileage can you get out
of a single joke? It’s a challenge that many comedic screenwriters have set up
for themselves with varying degrees of success. Some movies can wring the most
out of a joke and find new ways to tell it without losing its comedic impact,
while others quickly run out of steam and drag it out until a 90-minute movie
feels like three hours. But a good cast can go a long way, too. In the case of The Little Hours, which sports a solid
ensemble, including a few SNL and Parks & Recreation alumni, they’ve
been able to get a lot out of a movie that doesn’t have any joke to tell
besides “Hey, what if we had a bunch of nuns, but they were all raunchy and
sexy?”
Our story takes place in a
convent in 14th Century Italy and follows a trio of nuns: Alessandra
(Alison Brie), the daughter of a merchant who donates to the convent, the
aggressive, foul-mouthed Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza), who has some rather dark
secrets, and the introverted tattletale Ginevra (Kate Micucci). The sisters
toil away with the tedium of routine, with their days being a perpetual cycle
of chores and prayers, driving them stir-crazy to the point that they start
passing the time by verbally abusing their poor farmhand until they drive him
away. Their Father (John C. Reilly) bring in a new servant, Massetto (Dave
Franco), who has a price on his head after his lord (Nick Offerman) caught him in bed with his wife. For his own protection, he has to pretend to be deafmute, which
is easier said than done when Fernanda starts tormenting him and Alessandra
gets the hots for him.
Incidentally, The Little Hours seems like an
accidental parody of The Beguiled, in
that it’s an interesting take on an exploitative premise, but where that drew
influence from a pulpy Clint Eastwood film and uses it to subvert the gender
dynamics, this draws from a story from The
Decameron (an old collection of bawdy short stories in the vein of 1,001 Nights and The Canterbury Tales) and plays it for laughs. The characters,
dialogue, and even the plot to some extent, are incredibly anachronistic. With
a few minor changes, this story could easily be set in a boarding school. Plaza
is in her deadpan comfort zone as a jaded, slutty hipster long before those
even existed, Brie is the closest thing the abbey has to a spoiled rich kid
since her dad is financing the place, and even Franco’s performance has hints
of Heath Ledger’s in 10 Things I Hate
About You. The rest of the cast has some stellar performances, from John C.
Reilly’s functional alcoholic priest, to Molly Shannon playing her character
straight as the only person who actually fits into this time period, to a
late-game cameo from Fred Armisen as an exasperated bishop who has to deal with
aftermath of their revelry.
With its all-star cast and
ripe-for-satire premise, this looks primed to be a spiritual successor to Monty Python’s The Life of Brian or, to
a far lesser extent, Ken Russell’s The
Devils, but it never goes quite as far as either of those go. That’s
because the script opts to be a comedy of behavior instead of manic slapstick,
and has more in common with a Christopher Guest mockumentary. Unfortunately,
that does mean that the jokes are a bit hit or miss, especially since the movie
is running on one joke. It’s funny to hear a group of medieval nuns talk like
bitchy millennials at first, but it does start to wear thin after a while. But
the laughs mostly come from the characters’ interactions with each other. Our
three main characters all attempt to have sex with Massetto with varying
degrees of success, and one of the best parts of the movie is Franco’s silently
reacting to the madness going on around him as he tries desperately to not blow
his cover. In fact, my favorite scene in the whole movie is when he sneaks into
Alessandra’s room, but has to sneak back out without making a sound when an old
nun blindly walks in on them.
Perhaps I’m judging it based
on what I wanted it to be rather than what it is, but The Little Hours didn’t
quite meet my expectations. It’s still funny and has some great performances
and genuinely funny moments, and some of its more sacrilegious moments will
have some people clutching their pearls, even if it seems tame in comparison to
movies cut from the same cloth. I feel like this movie would’ve done much
better if it came out in the early 70’s when the whole nunsploitation sub-genre
was taking off, but as it is, it’s a good time even if the joke is one-note.
7/10
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