Where angels go, trouble follows.
That’s not only the title of a 1968 nun-com (Rosalind Russell as Mother Superior!) but also a general rule about films featuring priests and nuns; stripped of scandal, a film focused on religious life would be holy, and – let’s face it – wholly boring.
Director-writer Jeff Baena aims for a religious romp and sets his film in 14th-century Italy, at a convent occupied by some very dissatisfied holy women. Baena evidently based his tale on Boccaccio’s The Decameron novellas, which stamps the film with a mark of importance that the script just can’t deliver on, despite a stellar comedic cast.
Sisters Alessandra (Alison Brie), Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza) and Genevra (Kate Micucci) spend their days complaining about their daily routine and hoping for something better. They are collectively so nasty that they drive away the convent’s kindly labourer, aggrieving Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) to no end. But after a mishap on the road, Father takes in a young man on the run from his angry master (a deadpan Nick Offerman) and explains to the women that he is a deaf mute, hoping that fact will stop any abuse or arousal before it starts. “They can have a pack mentality,” Father warns his hunky charge.
But Massetto (Dave Franco) is catnip to the long-repressed inmates of the nunnery, leading all three women to act on their desires in disastrous (and mostly plot-puzzling) ways. Alessandra is an ace at embroidery but keeps hoping her father will raise enough money for a dowry and marry her off; Fernanda routinely disappears with the convent’s donkey and wears an out-of-season habit; and Genevra has more than a few secrets of her own. (Which is the bigger sin: to be a witch or to be Jewish?)
Sadly, none of these scenarios elicits more than a half-chuckle as the story spools to its cutesy conclusion.
Everyday people swearing up a storm onscreen is old hat: watching senior citizens talk like hardened criminals and angelic-looking kids cuss with abandon no longer has shock value. So perhaps listening to nuns drop language that would make a gangster blush is the last f-bomb frontier, but it’s an angle that wears thin after the first tirade.
And disappointingly, everyone plays to stereotype: Plaza is once again petulant and sullen; Brie is predictably prissy; and Jemima Kirke (HBO’s “Girls”) is naked, as usual, as a free-spirited friend of Fernanda’s who wanders onto the abbey grounds one day.
Molly Shannon, playing Mother Superior – an evolution of sorts of her Saturday Night Live Catholic schoolgirl character – is utterly wasted, as is Paul Reiser in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him turn as Alessandra’s penny-pinching father. Lauren Weedman (HBO’s “Looking”) as the lord’s long-suffering wife, the horny reason for Massetto’s banishment, is the lone standout.
Plaza produces The Little Hours, while cinematographer Quyen Tran has no problem making the verdant Tuscan countryside look picture-perfect. It’s the laughs that are in short supply, leaving the film needing some sort of a miracle.
