The Little Hours (2017)

I added The Little Hours on my watchlist ages ago because of the cast, specifically Aubrey Plaza and Dave Franco, but because of the characters, which are mostly nuns, I kept putting it off. I would have checked it earlier though if I had bothered reading the storyline. 

The film is based on the first tale of the third day of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron —which I'm yet to read—, and mainly follows three nuns, Sister Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza), Sister Ginevra (Kate Micucci), and Sister Alessandra (Alison Brie), who lives at a convent in the countryside. When a young, handsome servant (Dave Franco) fleeing from his master (Nick Offerman) takes refuge in the convent, the sexually-repressed nuns find ways to escape from their tedious lives. 

If a plot is what you are looking for then you should probably stay away from The Little Hours as it really lacks in that department and rather than a story it feels like watching a series of more or less connected Saturday Night Live sketches. That said, the story is still interesting enough to hold your attention and be enjoyable. 

The characters aren't very thought through either as they are pretty much walking stereotypes with very little characterization and no development at all, and some of them are nothing but plot devices —that's not very accurate though since you need a plot for that. This being said, each character has his/her own dose of crazy, especially Aubrey Plaza's, and for this reason they make quite memorable characters. 

As for the acting, there may not be award-worthy performances here but the cast does a pretty good job as most of them nail their characters and give humorous performances, the standouts being Aubrey Plaza and Kate Micucci, the first really delivering that contemporary dialogues and attitudes. 

Gunpowder & Sky

All of that being said, The Little Hours is still far from being a great, or good film. The problem is not the unnecessary nudity and vulgarity —it's not like you can't expect it from a movie like this—, but the fact that Dave Franco is criminally underused, the pacing is too slow and as a result, the film feels dragged in several places, a lot of the jokes fall flat, and if feels like director Jeff Baena always went with the first take so of course many scenes aren't as good as they could have been. 

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)

Saying that I was reluctant about The Lego Movie is a bit of an understatement as I thought it'd be a dumb kids flick but I gave it a chance anyway and I loved it. So of course I gave The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part a chance. 

Set immediately after the events of the original film, the story follows Emmet Brickowski (voiced by Chris Pratt) and his friends as they face a new threat, Lego Duplo invaders from outer space. When Lucy (voiced by Elizabeth Banks) and others are captured by General Sweet Mayhem (voiced by Stephanie Beatriz), Emmet attempts to rescue them while also trying to stop the Armamageddon.

The film is off to a really good start as the story is engaging and quite interesting to follow; unfortunately, about 30 minutes in, the plot starts to crumble with massive plot holes, a lot of cheesiness, discontinuity and nonsense, and a twist that could catch by surprise only someone who missed the beginning of the film.

There's something worse than a poor plot, poor characters and, unfortunately, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part has plenty of those. Not only development is nowhere to be found and the majority of the new characters aren't really that good, but the writers even managed to ruin some of the old characters. There are some nice additions though, like the dinosaurs. I loved those. But the rest, especially the whole Lego Duplo thing is so childish.

As for the jokes, they are fine but they are not nearly as good as they were in the first film. The problem is that many are recycled from the original film, others are either lame, childish or out of place, and the majority is pop culture references kids will never get —I mean, how many kids will get the Bruce Willis cameo? It's really hard to believe this was written by the same people who wrote The Lego Movie.

Warner Bros. Pictures

That said, the film is not a complete waste of time as it's overall enjoyable —although I lost my interest in the second part—, the voice cast still manages to do a good job despite the poor script, the animation looks fantastic, and some of the songs are not that bad. Not the "Catchy Song" though, that one is a pain for the ears. There's really nothing catchy about that song. It's just annoying.