Movie Reaction: The Little Hours

Formula: Your Highness +/- a century or two

I think we can all agree that the greatest use of a medieval text is to turn it into a raunchy comedy, right? That's the idea behind The Little Hours, which takes two of the stories from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and turns them into a movie about foul-mouthed nuns who like sex. When you consider that one of my favorite movies of all-time is A Knight's Tale, not to mention my delight in films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Your Highness, anachronistic medieval comedy really is a sweet spot for me. It's a tricky thing to get right though. Trying to be too authentic zaps the fun out of it and ignoring the setting too much doesn't ground the movie in anything. That's something The Little Hours has trouble with.

Calling the movie a foul-mouthed nun movie is a little simplistic. The story has a little more to it than that. Dave Franco plays a servant who is sleeping with his lord's (Nick Offerman's) wife. He is caught and escapes to a convent where nuns played by Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, and Molly Shannon reside. He's taken in by the alcoholic priest there (John C. Reilly) who has him to pretend he's a deaf/mute (because, reasons). Brie is in the convent because her father (Paul Reiser) is too strained financially to afford a dowry for her. Plaza pretty much hates everyone and Micucci just wants to fit in. If this plot was rewritten as a high school farce, I'd call it pretty basic, but the medieval setting makes it fresh.

The Little Hours has an odd sense of humor. A lot more of it is clever-funny than laugh-out-loud funny. Many of the jokes just didn't land the way I expected. The movie loves pointing ridiculous things out about that time period. Most of the times it's merely amusing though. For example, at one point two characters are distracted by a turtle with a candle on its back. The joke is that the world is so dull in those day that a turtle with a candle on it's back is something that will distract you from even the most important job and probably be a story you tell people all week. I got that, but there wasn't really a beat in the movie to laugh at that. It sort of reminds me of Steve Martin's stand-up practice of having jokes without punchlines. The idea is to let the audience decide when it will laugh at a joke. So, at a different point in the movie, you can either laugh at the sight gag of Nick Offerman as a medieval lord, laugh when he starts talking with a mix of old English and swearing, or wait to laugh under hit starts ranting about how much he hates Welshmen. There's not necessarily a specific beat when you should laugh. You just kind of feel it out. It can be an awkward way to watch a movie, but once you get used to it, it's a lot of fun.

The film has one big set piece. I won't spoil it in the specifics, although the biggest laughs of it have actually been used extensively in the trailers. It still works. It has the same punchline structure as the big set pieces in Crazy, Stupid Love and Burn After Reading. Pretty much, any time you have an authority figure recap the events that just happened in disbelief, I'm going to laugh a lot.

The cast is a little imbalanced. Aubrey Plaza and Kate Micucci get to flex their comedic muscles a lot more than Alison Brie, which is a shame. Dave Franco is asked to do more physical comedy, which isn't his strength. However, John C. Reilly plays to his strengths by being pathetic a lot of the time. Molly Shannon is wasted. She's used as more of an authority figure, but I remember her from her SNL days. She can go big with the best of them and isn't asked to here. A lot of familiar faces have smaller roles as well. Nick Offerman doesn't even need to have something funny to say. Just having him show up is enough. If he wants to have a lot of facial hair and say a couple awful things, that's great too. Perhaps I'm conditioned by Portlandia, but as soon as Fred Armisen showed up, I knew to expect good things. I'm not his biggest fan, but this is exactly the kind of thing that he excels in. He brings that energy like he's always in the middle of a playing an elaborate practical joke and really committing to it. I enjoyed Jemima Kirke showing up to play the medieval version of her Girls character too.

I kind of want to read the stories this was based on now. There are a lot of beats in this story that aren't congruent and I'd like to know how often that was because it was something from the text that writer/director Jeff Baena thought would be funny to keep in the screenplay. The story is in service to the joke though. It reminded me a lot of Casa De Mi Padre, which was more about the meta-joke of "isn't it funny that this exists" than it was funny at any particular point in the movie.

The Little Hours is not quite the movie I expected. I enjoyed it, although I had to recalibrate my expectations once it started. I think it might actually improve with a second viewing. I see why it got such a limited theatrical release. It's a niche comedy that won't appeal to everyone. Part of the fun is seeing familiar faces play these roles. With a more anonymous cast, I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend