A new comedy called The Little Hours and set in 1349 is based on a book I read as a teenager: The Decameron.*1 That alone was enough to attract my attention. However, when actor Aubrey Plaza’s new film premiered at Sundance it was so well-loved as to get picked up by a significant movie distributor, in this case a subsidiary (specializing in distributing independent films) of a general movie-distribution subsidiary of AT&T. That, too, would have been sufficient to get my notice as a well-funded distribution campaign was sure to put pop-up ads in my browser windows as mainstream release gets closer.
But apparently Bill Donohue at the Catholic League (who was not in attendance at Sundance and thus hasn’t seen the movie unless he’s claiming the Catholic League stole a copy) wanted to make absolutely sure that I saw this movie-set-in-a-convent and based on a collection of short stories that is to medieval Italian literature what The Cantebury Tales is to medieval English literature. And so, without seeing this film about hiding out in a convent while on the run and encountering stereotype-defying nuns who (nonetheless?) are kind and generous with their shelter and the silly hijinks dreamed up by a medieval Italian Catholic that ensue, Donohue released a statement calling the movie “Trash. Pure Trash.”