One of my favorite literary sub-genres is “Stuff Written During The Plague”. There’s a whole shelf in my bookcase dedicated to Stuff Written During The Plague (between “Angry Repressed Victorians” and “Maritime Mysteries [Non-Fiction]”). Medieval plague breakouts drove people out of cities—if you could afford to leave the city, that is. One of those lucky ones was Giovanni Boccaccio, author of The Decameron, which was probably begun during a fourteenth century plague epidemic in Florence. In The Decameron ten people fleeing the Black Death hole up in a villa and tell one another stories to pass the time, resulting in one hundred stories within the book (and so Chaucer was inspired). Some of the stories are sad, some romantic, and some are REALLY raunchy. The story of Rustico the monk was considered so vulgar that it was either removed entirely or edited beyond recognition for centuries.
The trailer for The Little Hours has been released and it looks like Bad Nuns, as Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, and Kate Micucci curse, fondle, and fight their way around their pretty convent. It’s based on The Decameron story about a gardener who sleeps with a bunch of nuns, with Dave Franco playing the gardener. The Little Hours premiered at Sundance, where people either loved or hated it, and the trailer quotes play on that, including the Catholic League’s palpable disapproval amid all the praise heaped on the film.
This is a tremendous comedic cast which also includes Fred Armisen, John C. Reilly, Nick Offerman, and Molly Shannon, and the writer/director, Jeff Baena, previously made the zombie rom-com Life After Beth, which got a little too high concept but was mostly funny. In just trailer form, Hours looks WAY funnier than Beth. The look on Dave Franco’s face when Aubrey Plaza is screaming in his ear alone is enough to sell me on this movie, but Fred Armisen’s, “Where am I?” also gets to me. The Little Hours comes out this summer, a couple weeks after Rough Night. Hopefully they both find an audience, although Hours has a more specific appeal. It’s target audience is the “likes sex jokes, witch orgies, and John C. Reilly” crowd. Count me in.
