'The Little Hours' Is Hilarious but Disjointed

The Little Hours is a comedy film set during the Middle Ages about a trio of mad, raunchy nuns – Alesandra (Allison Brie), Ginevra (Kate Micucci), and Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza) – who are each dealing with her own flaws and issues, as they lead a simple convent life.  One day, the three savagely insults and bullies the gardener, who then quits his job.  Enter Massetto (Dave Franco), a deaf-mute found by Father Tomasso (John C. Reilly), the convent’s leader and resident priest, to fill in the vacant position.  However, he’s really a runaway servant hiding from the angry lord whose wife he has cheated with, and he’s only pretending to be deaf-mute in order to avoid conflict with the problematic sisters.  But their unseemly behavior makes it hard for him to keep his cover.

I decided to watch this movie because I found its trailer hilarious.  I thought its presentation of foul-mouthed, angry, crazy, rude, bawdy medieval nuns – talking without any period flare, but in full-on modern American delivery and lexicon – makes an interesting, promising comedy premise due to its absurdity.

Well, this definitely resulted to some witty, uproarious moments in the movie.  However, they didn’t exactly cohesively mesh into an amusing whole.  The comedic parts are just great on their own.

But it’s not an awful movie at all.  Far from it.  It’s in fact smarter and more original than most current vulgar comedy films out there.  It rarely becomes moderately boring.  The cast is made up of capable comedians, and they totally brought it.  And it’s attractively well-shot.

Nonetheless, though I was entertained, I just didn’t enjoy The Little Hours as much as I thought I would.  Again, it just feels a bit disjointed to me.