Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 31, 1990 TAG: 9003310398
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: VINCENT CANBY THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
If nuns weren't so intimidating (for whatever reasons), the sight of bogus nuns cutting up in most un-nunlike ways could not have remained as good for the sustained guilty giggle as it still is in this genial new English farce.
"Nuns on the Run" is a great leveler. It makes everyone in the audience feel a rascally 8 years old, the age at which whoopee cushions (when they work) seem the greatest invention since firecrackers.
There are no whoopee cushions in "Nuns on the Run," but there are the next best things for a movie: Eric Idle of the Monty Python troupe, and Robbie Coltrane ("Mona Lisa," "Eat the Rich") as, respectively, Brian Hope and Charlie McManus, a pair of small-time London hoods.
When Brian and Charlie find themselves in possession of 50,000 pounds ($80,000) that isn't theirs, and pursued by two sets of thugs who want to terminate them, they seek the nearest sanctuary.
They sneak into St. Joseph's College, an institution for well-bred young women run by the Missionary Brides of Christ.
By chance Brian and Charlie find the laundry room first, so by the time they meet their benefactors, they are in full habit.
Asked to identify themselves, Charlie squeakily admits to being Sister Inviolata of the Immaculate Conception.
Brian is Sister Euphemia of the Five Wounds, or, as she says, being girlish, " `Five Wounds' for short."
Everything happens that could possibly put Brian and Charlie in situations that are morally and emotionally tight.
Brian's girlfriend, a pretty, myopic young woman named Faith (Camille Coduri), who doesn't know that he's a bank robber (or a nun), somehow turns up at the college.
A tiny, very old nun, whose memory is short, insists on helping them by locking up their briefcase containing the 50,000 pounds.
The Sister Superior (Janet Suzman) assigns Charlie to take over a class studying the Trinity.
Another sister invites them to freshen up in the community shower. Says Charlie's Sister Inviolata, "I'm not that kind of nun."
Brian's Sister Euphemia becomes the object of the attentions of Father Seamus (Tom Hickey), who is known throughout the order for his vagrant hands.
There's also a chase through a hospital when (I've forgotten why) Brian and Charlie are wearing filmy black-lace unmentionables under their nun's drag. Complications mount.
"Nuns on the Run" has something of the cheerful licentiousness of "A Fish Called Wanda" without that film's exhausting intensity.
Idle and Coltrane charge through the movie effortlessly, receiving super support along the way from Suzman, who is remarkably comic playing it as straight as possible; Hickey; Miss Coduri, and Robert Patterson, as the head of the gang to which Brian and Charlie belong.
When first seen, Patterson is having his nails polished in his office, lounging under a reproduction of Picasso's "Guernica."
Lynn, who both wrote and directed "Nuns on the Run," is probably best known in this country as the co-author (with Antony Jay) of the "Yes, Minister" television series. He seems to be a very funny man. `Nuns on the Run' A 20th Century Fox release playing at the Salem Valley 8 theaters (389-0444). Rated PG-13 for some mildly vulgar language and partial nudity.
by CNB