In Which We Stare Down Alison Brie In The Past

Perils of Adam

by ELEANOR MORROW

The Little Hours
dir. Jeff Baena
90 minutes

You can tell how much writer-director Jeff Baena loves his girlfriend Aubrey Plaza in the opening moments of The Little Hours. Fernanda is a young witch posing as a nun in 15th century, and as she drags a donkey across a landscape that looks suspiciously un-European, the camera can barely hold its attention off of her. Baena writes his life partner into the most objectionable role, but this is a subtle message also esteemed in the source material of The Decameron: the unlikeliest things are also the holiest.

Plaza looks a lot like Alison Brie since for the most part all we see are their full-lipped, pouting faces and icy eyes. Even with her body obscured, there is something indecent about Alison, and no matter how prim she looks, we realize she will be disrobing at some point in every narrative. In The Little Hours, that comes in the garden of a convent, where she pounces on the mute gardener, Massetto (Dave Franco).

Even thought The Little Hours does not focus at all on the beauty of its female leads, it would be a hard thing to obscure it. Baena not only seems devoted to Brie and Plaza, but this is also the best Molly Shannon, also playing a nun, and John C. Reilly, as the local priest, have looked in years. Baena gives all of his actresses and actors a quiet dignity, except for one. 

Dave Franco was maybe not the best actor to begin with, but he is supposed to be the straight man here and in this role he fails miserably. Attempting not to draw undue attention to Franco's physical form, Baena makes a show of his considerable deficiences. First of all, the man's gargantuan adam's apple slides up and down his throat perilously for the entire film. I don't know what everyone involved might have been able to do about this, but preventing Franco from repeatedly swallowing during his scenes would have been a welcome start.

The Little Hours initially focuses on Alison Brie's desire to leave the convent against the wishes of her father Ilario (Paul Reiser) in order to select a husband, but it is quickly distracted by her embroidery. Reiser never appears in the movie again and Brie never does manage to find a husband. Instead of any plot per se, we receive a series of jokes involving the aggressive nature of Ms. Plaza. Some are funny, like when she assaults the convent's handyman and calls him a Jew. Others are not really as enlivening, since they involve her brandishing a knife repeatedly and saying 'fuck' more times than is really entertaining.

Baena's last directorial effort, Joshy, was a clone of The Big Chill that was very serious and depressing. In contrast, The Little Hours is even less significant or thematically memorable than a Mel Brooks movie. It is at least a great deal funnier, which is not actually saying a lot. It is obvious that the film was made on a considerably tiny budget, and it shows. The Little Hours avoids displaying the local town at all – we just see actors going and returning from the place. Even the props and costumes on this production are third or fourth rate.

Late in the film, Fred Armisen shows up as a bishop. His presence adds a striking focus to the proceedings, as if what we really required to enjoy the bad behavior of these purported adherents to the word of the lord was an antagonist who doubted their sincerity. It is a missed opportunity that he only receives a few scenes, and that they are the most amusing in the entire film reminds us that The Little Hours is about as meaningful as a Portlandia sketch.

I don't know what turned Baena off from making serious cinema instead of something this frivolous. He might taken a page out of the comparative success of The Big Sick and made something that comes a little more directly from his heart. He could make a movie about why Aubrey Plaza is interested him. Does he have a large penis or cooking skills that would otherwise explain why she lives in the house?

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording.

In Which We Refrain From Touching The Bride Whatsoever

Dating Yourself

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
dir. Jake Szymanski
98 minutes

Eric (Veep's Sam Richardson) is marrying a white woman named Jeanie (Stephanie Beard) who comes from a unique family. Eric gives Jeanie some absurd pecks on the lips but basically he is not allowed to touch her for the duration of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, despite the fact that this Hawaiian wedding is supposed to be the greatest day of his life.

Instead of touching her swarthy, African-American husband-to-be, Jeanie complains that she never got the bachelorette party that she deserved and has multiple orgasms with a Pakistani masseuse. She has only one friend in the world, a lanky Jewish woman who serves as her maid of honor. This is a considerable improvement over her fiance, however, who has no parents or friends at his wedding at all.

Instead of their pals from college or work, Jeanie and Eric are pathetically focused on the abstract lives of Jeanie's brothers Mike (Zac Efron) and Dave (Adam Devine). Efron looks like he is being held hostage for most of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Romantically he is paired with Anna Kendrick, who appreciates his meager talents such as they are. Instead of allowing Mike's dream to be that of a dancer or singer, he wants to be an illustrator.

Anna Kendrick's face needs a rest. She looks exhausted and bloated from the sheer number of roles she has taken over the past year. There is something profoundly unhappy in her mien, and it doesn't help that she is wearing either the world's most terrible wig for the duration of this movie or she simply couldn't be bothered to comb her hair. Her character was recently left at the altar by a man who we never learn very much about, but given the massive amount of drugs and alcohol she consumes in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, it is hard to say he made the wrong call.

During the rehearsal dinner, Kendrick gives Jeanie a bunch of MDMA. Nothing bad at all happens from this, which passes on the lovely lesson that dropping molly can only lead to romping with horses in the Hawaiian countryside and realizing you don't want to consummate your interracial marriage. There is not a lot of love between of any of these people: they specifically are never any good at valuing each other's positive qualities.

Left to carry the humor and, strangely, also the emotional end of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is Adam Devine (Workaholics, Modern Family). First off, it must be noted the herculean effort on the part of everyone involved with this production to make Devine and his co-star Efron look normal-sized. Both are absolutely tiny, and you really wish they would own that and make it part of the story instead of shooting everything like Mission Impossible 2 where Tom Cruise looked approximately 6'5".

You do begin to forget about how much of a delicate morsel of a human being Devine is. His relationship (or lack thereof) with Tatiana (Aubrey Plaza) begins when she intentionally is hit by a car so that she can pretend he saved her via CPR. In this role as femme fatale, Plaza fits the casting in everything but her chipped teeth. Her New York accent is vaguely offensive and somewhat distracting, but the rest of her is a welcome evolution from the snippy roles she usually inhabits.

Aubrey Plaza and Devine are the only people in this movie that seem the least bit suited for each other, so of course she spends the entire running time avoiding him, climaxig in a scene where she fingers his female cousin for the chance at Rihanna tickets. This doesn't seem the slightest bit out of character, but it makes it ridiculous that she ever writes off Devine, who is completely her type.

Sometimes Devine seems to be merely vamping jokes and one-liners from his slacker series on Comedy Central, Workaholics, but other times his back-and-forths with Efron are genuinely funny and sweet. One I Love Lucy-esque scene takes place on a bizarrely tiny beach (to make them look bigger?). As Devine explains how everything in his life has gone completely wrong, he becomes a distinctly, plausible human being. Devine has a deft grasp on playing a person who cannot succeed on any aspect of himself other than his own enthusiasm.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording.