The Little Hours Has All The Laughs (And Yawns) Of The 14th Century

The Little Hours, a 14th-century comedy largely starring the trio of Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza and Kate Micucci as Italian nuns, offered some big laughs. With a great cast and some clever meta jabs, this story of lust and love was definitely entertaining, but somehow still managed to feel like a drag, especially for a movie that is only 90 minutes.

The Little Hours is based on one of the many stories found in The Decameron, a collection of novellas by the 14th-century author Giovanni Boccaccio. The three previously mentioned nuns live in a convent in the Italian countryside run by the (secretly a drunkard) Father Tommasso, played by the always great John C. Reilly.

Due to some mishaps related to having sex with a Lord’s wife, Dave Franco’s Massetto is on the run for his life, and finds the perfect hiding place as the new hired hand helping with repairs and other tasks around the convent. The previous hired hand had quit, because the nuns would tend to get bored and degrade and assault him. To make the nuns not try anything, Father Tommasso schemed to have Massetto pretend to be deaf and mute.

This, naturally, results in a pagan ceremony in the woods complete with drug-induced hallucinations, nudity, and human sacrifices. Didn’t see that coming? Yeah, things go off the rails quickly after the trio of nuns sneak some holy wine and start having their own fun.

Throughout the movie, Plaza, Reilly and head nun Molly Shannon offer up some really funny moments, with some awkward goofball antics from Kate Micucci’s naive Ginerva added for good measure. Brie’s character plays the goody-two-shoes role, but there’s also a small side story involving Brie’s father, who has left her in the convent until the family can raise enough money for a dowry to marry her off.

It’s these moments, along with all the drunken sex, that really shatters the preconceived notion that nuns, monks and other holy men and women of the middle ages were these perfect religious figures, living to the letter of the Bible every day. These people had flaws, urges and everything else, those stories were just rarely told. Nuns, like Brie’s Alessandra, also used convents as a form of schooling until it was time to be wed. It wasn’t always a decision rooted in devotion for many women at the time.

While this movie shows these supposed holy figures living in various sins, it doesn’t really condemn religion. It’s more about human flaws, and what happens when we do what we want versus what we should. Also, amidst all this sin and witchcraft, there still manages to be a touching love story between two unlikely people, wrapping the movie up with a bow and a little kiss on the forehead.

One of the constant sources of amusement in The Little Hours is that despite this movie being set in medieval Italy, there are no attempts by any of the actors or actresses to speak differently from today. There’s no attempts at accents and no dialogue written to sound from centuries ago. There’s one moment where the movie winks at this, with one character popping up with a British accent. This has Ginerva questioning the accent, and not believing that the character was from around the area.

While there are some big laughs, especially during the nun assault on the first hired hand and the Lord’s guards at the end, The Little Hours still managed to drag in the middle. The comedy definitely gives way to story advancement, and a few scenes seemed repetitive. There also wasn’t enough of Fred Armisen’s hilarious Bishop Bartolomeo, whose appearance towards the end of The Little Hours is some of the movie’s funniest moments.

The Little Hours is a fun romp filled with some great performances, but manages to make an hour and a half feel more like two. If you’re looking for something to see this weekend, you could do far worse than a quick trip back in time to when foul-mouthed nuns roamed the countryside, but it’s not crucial viewing.

So what do you think? Are you excited to see The Little Hours? Will you wait until it’s available to rent or stream? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.