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Canada, United States · 2017
Rated R · 1h 30m
Director Jeff Baena
Starring Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Kate Micucci, Aubrey Plaza
Genre Comedy
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In this anachronistic dark comedy set in the Middle Ages, a group of nuns find themselves struggling with their vows of chastity after the arrival of a new gardener who's in hiding from his master. Loosely based on Boccaccio's The Decameron, this film puts a modern spin on Medieval drama.
Writer-director Jeff Baena has squeezed heart into this film, particularly with a surprisingly sincere, potent ending. Beneath all the bodily fluids and sex jokes, Baena and his actors show a deep fascination with the way we communicate our love, romantically and platonically — especially when the going gets tough.
The Little Hours is no one-trick pony. While the lunacy of nuns who swear like sailors makes a comically boisterous impression, it’s also about women in the Middle Ages forced into religious life for various reasons and how they cope, viewed through a decidedly humorous lens.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
The movie is not camp. It’s deliciously deadpan sex farce played by some of the deftest clowns in the English-speaking world. The more matter-of-fact it is, the more screamingly funny.
Consequence of Sound by Dominick Suzanne-Mayer
The Little Hours is reasonably entertaining, but it hints just enough at something deeper that it may well leave you wanting.
Matching a crackling wit with the absurd dissonance of time and place found in the best of Monty Python and Mel Brooks, Little Hours is so eager to please that its one-note humor lands with ease.
The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore
A comedy in both the current and the original senses of the word, Little Hours earns its laughs before ensuring a happy end.
It’s far from achieving the holy grail of comedy, but as a frivolous, fleeting time, The Little Hours has its charms thanks to the strength of its cast.
On paper, The Little Hours sounds like a combative anti-religious tract, but Baena’s less interested in mocking the church than in basking in the gulf between humanity’s lofty aspirations and its baser instincts.
Even if The Little Hours never becomes a knee-slapper, it’s consistently entertaining…kind of like a laid-back, stretched-out Monty Python sketch.
A medieval convent comedy for the megaplex crowd.
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