Nuns on the Run

I was introduced to this classic by my mother at the age of 10 I'm now 31 and still enjoy it now as much as I did then. Okay it's far from perfect and the dialogue is a little lazy in places but it's still a lot of fun.

Nuns on the Run has to be one of the funniest british movies ever made. From the very start it is genuinely funny. I have been a big fan of Eric Idle for years due to The Monty Python films,sketches etc and in Nuns on the Run is comic standard is definitely up to scratch. If you like a laugh or brit films, watch this.

If you have a comedy starring two of England's best, Eric Idle (Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and Robbie Coltrane (Rubeus Hagrid in the harry Potter movies), then you just have to watch. This was a charming little comedy about two guys trying to go straight, but pulling one last job and ending up in a nunnery.

Of course, you have the Catholic jokes, and the guys in a girls dorm jokes, some Oscar-nominated talent, an MBE, and a nude girl in a shower, but that's all icing on the cake.

British comedy is just fin to watch. You won't end up on the floor laughing, but you will chuckle for the whole 89 minutes.

Jonathan Lynn (The Fighting Temptations, The Whole Nine Yards, My Cousin Vinney) wrote and directed this film, and you know he can make us laugh.

Every few years someone thinks it would be a funny idea to have guys running around in girl's clothing or vice versa. (Occasionally a Wayans brother (or two) think it would be even funnier if they were also a different race as well as a different gender, but that's another, sadder story.) Nuns on the Run is most definitely a one-note premise milked dry, but it has enough jokes along the way to make it a worthwhile 90 minutes.

Brian (Eric Idle) and Charlie (Robbie Coltrane) are reluctant robbers who lament the old classy days where violence wasn't necessary. Their boss Case is a hard nut who favours the new ways – guns n stuff – and the boys are dropped in the sh*t when he discovers that they want out.

So out of desperation the duo decide to 'heist the heisters', keep the ill gotten gains for themselves and zippedy-skidoo off to Brazil for the remainder of their lives.

Things get complicated when 1/ Brian falls for a ditzy waitress named Faith, and 2/ the re-heist goes awry and they must lie low in the nearest safe place.

Of course this is a nunnery, and despite looking like guys with horrible make up and sounding like guys doing women's voices badly none of the nuns are nun the wiser… or something like that.

What ensues is obvious and formulaic – but funny nonetheless.

We get to see these obvious non-nuns teaching impressionable young girls about religion, (and after phys-ed joining them in the showers!), hear confession, and watch ugly Brian ward off the local horny priest and keep his cover a secret from Faith who has managed to show up at the nunnery.

As the police, the triads and Case's gang all search for the boys and their stolen cash even the nuns start getting a little suss as to their true identities.

Eric Idle and Robbie Coltrane are both very strong comedic actors, though it must be said some of the bit parts were cast in haste, as some of the acting is quite atrocious.

All that said the banter is light and humorous and there are some genuine laughs at times. It's hard not to like Nuns on the Run, it isn't blasphemous or too racy and for the most part realises it is little more than an innocent flick with no delusions of grandeur.

Final Rating – 6 / 10. Hard to track down now, and admittedly a one-note flick. But a good one.

Handmade films started off by making the phenomenal Monty Python's Life of Brian, made several fantastic films to follow that, and just 11 years later wound down their production with this hidden gem. Nuns on the Run is a truly British comedy. No other country in the world can do comedy as well as the British, and this movie represents when they got just about everything right. Perfect casting, fantastic scenario and some hilarious one-liners. This was really one of the last great films comedies, with only Fierce Creatures and Chicken Run coming close since. Unfairly maligned, I seldom hear a good word said about it in the film community, yet nobody I know possibly has any criticism of it. It will continue to be a personal favourite of mine, and I'd hope that other people will in time realise just what they've been missing. 9/10.