Critics reviews

The three extremely funny actresses go to town with all of the possibilities. But Baena also gets that smaller moments of humor act as glue to keep the whole thing together. He is sensitive to the comedic possibilities in a glance, a pause, a visual. Perhaps most strikingly, Baena has a fine-tuned sense of the absurd. There's a bit with a turtle walking slowly by a doorway that is such a quiet little moment, really, but it has an enormous comedic impact.

At times, the atmosphere is so clubby that the actors seem to be performing mainly for one another. Centering on three irreverent nuns played by Aubrey Plaza (witchy and bitchy), Alison Brie (frustrated and snooty) and Kate Micucci (bi-curious and babyish), the goofy plot never finds its groove. Molly Shannon, in the role of senior sister, is virtually ignored; and Dave Franco's hunky handyman is mostly just a ripped body for female characters to enthusiastically molest.

Every few months in the world of movies, there's a small delight that nearly slips past notice. The Little Hours, an unapologetically anachronistic confection directed by Jeff Baena (Life After Beth) and based loosely--very loosely--on Boccaccio's Decameron, is one of these.

For all its hip ludicrousness, The Little Hours has a point: to almost earnestly riff on how atheism has taken hold of 21st-century America, by rooting our nation's mores in a time of great austerity, sexism, classism, and persecution... The contrivance of modern dialogue in a period setting comes to mirror the unnaturalness of organized religion itself.

A clever and gleefully anachronistic comedy... The good-natured comedy has only occasional outbursts of wildness; the cheerfully playful ribaldry of the writing and the performances can't quite overcome the mere efficiency of the filmmaking.