Nuns on the Run Movie Review

Nuns on the Run with Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane is pretty funny, although any movie with that title and those stars deserves to be VERY funny. One reason it isn't is because Nuns on the Run is set up almost exactly the same way as the great Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot. In that movie, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play two characters who hide out from gangsters by pretending to be members of an all-girls band. In Nuns on the Run, Idle and Coltrane play two characters who hide out from gangsters by pretending to be nuns in a convent. There's even a dizzy blonde (Camille Coduri) who has the same plot functions as Marilyn Monroe did in Some Like It Hot. She even walks into things when she isn't wearing her glasses, just like Monroe did in How to Marry a Millionaire. The comedies that make us laugh the loudest are the ones that make us laugh when we don't expect to laugh. But when we know the plot, no matter how silly Eric and Robbie look in nun's clothes, no gag can be that much of a surprise. Janet Suzman is as good as she can be in the skimpy supporting role that director Jonathan Lynn wrote for her, but it IS odd to see Eric Idle hand scenes to other cast members on a platter. He is so low-key in Nuns on the Run that Robbie Coltrane gets most of the laughs. Still, watching these two impersonate Sister Euphemia of the Five Hounds and Sister Inviolata of the Immaculate Conception is good for a few giggles, especially if you ever went to Catholic school. And Coltrane dancing in a nun's outfit is definitely a sight to see.

1990 (PG-13) 95m/C Eric Idle, Robbie Coltrane, Janet Suzman, Camille Coduri, Robert Patterson, Tom Hickey, Doris Hare, Lila Kaye; D: Jonathan Lynn; W: Jonathan Lynn; C: Mike Garfath. VHS, LV