Nuns on the Run (1990)
It’s no Tootsie or Some Like It Hot, but the cross-dressing Nuns delivers a goofy, well-paced ninety minutes laced with a gentle mockery of Catholicism.
Gangsters Brian and Charlie (Eric Idle, Robbie Coltrane) want to get out of the business, having grown tired of their new boss’ fondness for violence, drugs and gang conflict. During their latest job they try to rip him off and disappear to South America with the loot, but things go wrong and they’re forced to hide out in a nunnery.
Here they start mingling with a motley crew that includes an alcoholic gambling nun, a priest with a reputation for wandering hands, a senile nun, and a sister superior whose expression suggests she knows full well that she’s surrounded by idiots. Most are happy, however, because ‘they checked their brains in at the door.’
There are some amusing escapades in the Ealing-inspired Nuns, such as the Catholic Charlie teaching the non-religious Brian to genuflect before explaining the complexities of the Trinity (“Hmm, it’s a bit of a bugger.”) Brian can’t get his head around any of it, leading Charlie to agree: “It makes no sense to anybody. That’s why you have to believe it. If it made sense, it wouldn’t be a religion, would it?” Brian keeps trying to understand but ends up concluding: “Some conmen sell life insurance. The Church sells after-life insurance. It’s brilliant. Everyone thinks you might need it and no one can prove you don’t.”
Idle and Coltrane spark well off each other in a lowbrow effort that quality-wise falls somewhere between Python and Carry On. I particularly enjoyed the sight of them desperately trying to stay in character in a changing room filled with naked novices after teaching a basketball class.
Elsewhere, there are some terribly unconvincing meat cleaver-wielding triads, an even more unconvincing romance with a sweet-natured, half-blind waitress, and a chief baddie who looks like he’s just stepped out of a criminal version of the Pet Shop Boys. The far more successful (and quite ghastly) caper comedy Sister Act popped up two years later to shamelessly steal Nuns’ premise.
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