Mettons les voiles

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.

It is the British comedy what you expect. Not only for humor but for the impecable script. Lovely performances. And crumbs of Monty Python. Short, a delight.

I'm not Catholic, and to this day I have yet to actually see a nun. But that doesn't make this movie any less funny.

Nuns aren't what make "Nuns on the Run" funny, anyway. This is the kind of movie where two guys (Idle and Coltrane) are only trying to get out of a job they hate (running jobs for a local gangster) and end up in a steadily escalating series of disasters that make things worse than before. It just so happens that they are dressed like nuns through most of it.

Of course, I thought that the whole cross-dressing thing was funny as far back as when Benny Hill and Monty Python (Idle's old troupe) brought this facet of humor over to us Yanks, and it still works. Must be a British thing.

The whole business with the gangsters, the Japanese and the poor innocent girl (Coduri) caught up in the middle of the mess helps the pot to boil to overflowing. There are plenty of verbal gems within ("'Five Wounds' for short!") and one or two bits of visual humor that still bring a smile to my face.

I still chuckle when I think of how one of the sisters comes to suspect the new "sisters" aren't what they seem after going into the bathroom after one. Get the idea? Good.

Director/writer Lynn has done better and worse but this is one to think of when it's a rainy day and you just want a good laugh that doesn't require TOO much thought.

Eight stars for "Nuns on the Run" and remember: Jesus is small, green and split four ways.

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.

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.