'The Little Hours' Review: Nuns behaving badly!

🕯The Little Hours🕯Review🕯8/10🕯

Medieval nuns Alessandra, Fernanda, and Ginevra lead a simple life in their convent. After a particularly vicious insult session that drives there peasant away, Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly) finds Massetto (Franco) on his travels, a virile young servant forced into hiding by his angry lord therefore giving Tommasso an idea. Introduced to the sisters as a deaf-mute to discourage temptation, Massetto struggles to maintain his cover.

An array of popular comic actors unite to create spoofy pandemonium in a rather bizzare medieval setting, with no-holds-barred sexual antics and randy nuns behaving very badly (pun intended). If audiences have as much fun as the performers do in The Little Hours, it will definitely earn lots of fans, possibly even becoming a cult favorite destined for repeat viewings. Amusing, leisurely moments of "contemplation" of the religious kind are intercut with outrageous bawdy events and comic threats of bodily harm to Dave Franco's death-mute Massetto, the innocent object of just about everyone's peverted affection.

Standouts in the superb cast include Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, and Kate Micucci, who give terrific, vanity-free performances as the young novices. Fred Armisen, in a small role as a visiting bishop, excels at scene-stealing and has you in stitches every time he appears on-screen. Just a little warning, this film is not for everyone, some people may be offended due to contemporary dialogue and certain attitudes that play against the pastoral setting and centuries-old way of life.