Nuns go wild in Jeff Baena’s ‘The Little Hours’
Gunpowder & Sky debuted the red band trailer for Jeff Baena’s Monty Pythonesque comedy The Little Hours ahead of its June 2017 release, and the film still draws viewers who want a bawdy medieval romp.
The premise stays simple: a young servant hides inside a convent to dodge his furious master. The twist is the nunnery itself, packed with eccentric nuns who chase sex, substances, and chaos. What follows is a nonstop swirl of pansexual mischief and irreverent revelry.
Baena loosely adapted the story from Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, pulling from the third-day tales that center on desire and trickery. The script keeps the medieval setting but layers on modern comic timing and an ensemble built for quick, cutting banter.
Production Background
Baena shot the film after the festival circuit success of Life After Beth and Joshy. It premiered in the Midnight section at Sundance 2017, where Gunpowder & Sky picked it up. Positive critical reception followed, and the movie still enjoys an ongoing streaming presence more than eight years later.
Release and Distribution
The film opened in theaters on June 30, 2017. It ultimately grossed roughly $1.6 million worldwide, with international VOD and DVD releases rolling out in the months after the limited theatrical run.
Critical and Audience Reception
Reviewers praised the committed cast and the film’s willingness to lean into raunch while nodding at the source material’s themes of freedom and hypocrisy. It earned a 78 percent Tomatometer on 128 reviews and a 69 Metascore. The consensus pointed to the ensemble’s chemistry and the way the comedy updates Boccaccio’s stories for contemporary ears.
Box Office Performance
The picture launched with $56,676 in two theaters and held screens for an eleven-week run. Its per-theater average stayed healthy in the limited-release window, helping the modest budget reach a worldwide total of $1.647 million.
Streaming and Home Entertainment Availability
Viewers can now find The Little Hours on Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV, and Kanopy. A physical Blu-ray edition arrived in 2022 for collectors who want the uncut version on disc.
Legacy and Cultural Context
The movie sits in a small lineage of indie comedies that treat period settings as playgrounds rather than museums. Its loose take on the Decameron stories keeps the focus on the nuns’ appetites and the servant’s scramble to survive them. The cast list still reads like a snapshot of late-2010s alt-comedy: Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Aubrey Plaza, Kate Micucci, John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon, and Nick Offerman. Plaza and Elizabeth Destro produced, and the film’s R-rated tone helped it stand out from more restrained medieval spoofs.
Years later, the picture remains an easy recommendation for anyone looking for quick, filthy laughs without a prestige filter. Its modest earnings and steady catalog life show how a sharp cast and a clear comic premise can carry an indie title past its initial release window and into regular rotation on streaming queues.
