The Little Hours Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Dave Franco. Directed by Jeff Baena. Rated R. Opens Friday at Village Square.
Though Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century publication The Decameron sounds like a dull, college required-reading tome, it’s actually full of bawdy gags and unchecked lust, so much so that even Pier Paolo Pasolini made a movie based on its tales. Now comes Jeff Baena’s The Little Hours, also based on Boccaccio. It looks like professional, prestigious Oscar-bait before introducing three nuns (Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie and Kate Micucci) who unleash a barrage of F-bombs on a poor gardener.
Elsewhere, a nobleman’s servant, Massetto (Dave Franco), is caught sleeping with his boss’ cougar wife. He escapes by posing as a deaf-mute handyman at the convent, where the nuns desire the pleasures of his—and each other’s—flesh. John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon and Nick Offerman co-star, but Fred Armisen steals the show in his small role as a bishop who arrives to set things straight. (His chastising of Plaza—“Are you rolling your eyes at me?”—is a highlight.) Director Baena has worked with most of the cast before, notably on his equally low-key zombie comedy Life After Beth. He molds all of the craziness and sauciness into comedy so dry, it might take two viewings for the jokes to seem like jokes.
