Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Garfagnana, Italy, 1347. The handsome servant Masseto, fleeing from his vindictive master, takes shelter in a nunnery where three young nuns, Sister Alessandra, Sister Ginevra and Sister Fernanda, try unsuccessfully to find out what their purpose in life is, a conundrum that each of them faces in different ways.
The Little Hours earns its distinctiveness by transplanting Boccaccio's bawdy Decameron tales into a delightfully anachronistic improv-comedy framework — modern profanity, casual vulgarity, and deadpan delivery set against authentic medieval Italian locations. The cast (Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, Dave Franco, John C. Reilly) commits fully to the irreverent tone, making the acting genuinely charming even if the characters are thin. Cinematography is functional and naturalistic, leaning on the picturesque Tuscan setting without doing much creative work. The plot is loosely episodic and meanders, never building to much, and the ending fizzles rather than lands. But as a comedic concept it is genuinely one-of-a-kind — nobody else was making this film.