The momentum peters out by the end, but by then its job is already done. "The Little Hours" is good for some big laughs.

| Original Score: B | Jul 22, 2017

Whether or not Baena does right by Boccaccio, he definitely does right by Aubrey Plaza, his girlfriend and indie comedy's reigning queen of mean.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 20, 2017

Baena orchestrates events with confidence and flair, allowing his amazingly talented cast room to frolic as they all work in tandem to make the material come alive with a rebellious zeal that's ingenious.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2017

No matter how obvious the set-up - what if men and women of the cloth were ... rude and sexy??? - the cast gives every scene just enough of a deadpan spin to sell it, at least for the first hour.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 14, 2017

True, The Little Hours is essentially a one-joke comedy - but most of the jokes under the umbrellas of that one joke are pretty damn, I mean darn, funny.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 13, 2017

Medieval purists: prepare to cringe.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 13, 2017

The strategy works surprisingly well. I liked a lot of writer-director Jeff Baena's picture; it may be a one-joke movie, but I've seen comedies recently that would've killed for that many.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 12, 2017

For all the silliness, there's something lovable about Fernanda, Alessandra, and Genevra by the end of their profane rampage, and that's enough of a feat to make The Little Hours genuinely watchable.

| Jul 12, 2017

Today, it requires the stainless-steel deadpan of Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, and John C. Reilly (among others) to conjure up a world where such piety is possible enough to pillory.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 7, 2017

"The Little Hours" is a bawdy bagatelle that has more than a few droll moments. But it was probably at its most pleasurable and amusing in the making.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 6, 2017

This foul-mouthed medieval romp is occasionally hilarious and frequently improper - though a little more scripting and a little less romping would have served it well.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 6, 2017

The Little Hours is a farce that doesn't really mock anything. It exists as if amusing itself were its only objective.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 6, 2017

The film manages to be both crudely hilarious and bluntly satiric while also establishing sympathetic characters, a sharp contemporary wit, a sly, dry absurdism ... and a "Handmaid's Tale"-like subversiveness.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 6, 2017

Though very funny, "The Little Hours" remains low-key and subtle in its effects. There's no winking or nudging, no straining for laughs. Baena devised the material, and he trusts it.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 5, 2017

"The Little Hours" never really commits to being one thing or another. There aren't any written jokes, but it treats its own genre as a punchline. Ultimately, you're just left wondering what it is, and what the point of it all might be.

| Jul 1, 2017

A riotous medieval-era sex romp played with lunatic conviction by a great cast.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 30, 2017

A 14th-century farce that, given its comically credentialed players, ought to be a great deal funnier than it is.

| Jun 29, 2017

A 14th-century convent isn't the most expected setting for a raunchy sex comedy, but with The Little Hours, writer-director Jeff Baena adapts parts of Boccaccio's Decameron into an absurd and hysterical tale of nuns gone wild.

| Original Score: B | Jun 29, 2017

Looking for a break from the Black Death, or even just the summer heat? The Little Hours is just the thing.

| Jun 29, 2017

[A] frequently funny, agreeably bawdy farce, which imagines what a convent of the grubby, violent, disease-infested Middle Ages might look and sound like if it were populated by characters straight out of a modern NBC sitcom.

| Original Score: B | Jun 29, 2017