by Flynn Shan Benson
Worth: $6.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Judy Davis, Miriam Margoyles, Jacki Weaver, Elijah Tamati, Johnny Brugh, Craig Hall, Nat Boltt
Intro:
All we can do now is pray.
The film begins with Brian (Elijah Tamati), a ten-year-old in New Zealand in 1974, complete with high-waisted shorts and striped tees. His Maori mother died some time ago, so he now lives with his Anglo father (Craig Hall), his step-mother (director Nat Boltt), and the rest of his unwelcome new family. Brian acts out, pointedly saying grace in Maori before the family meal and escaping his home life for the local convent, where Sisters Agnes (Judy Davis), Mary Clare (Jacki Weaver), and Luke (Miriam Margoyles) lead an existence closer to The Three Stooges than Mother Theresa. To add comic relief to the comic relief, the local priest (Johnny Brugh) bumbles around between bouts of drinking and betting on horse-races.
A reasonable viewer would assume that these superannuated sisters would embody a church that is fading in society without new generations to sustain it. A reasonable viewer would be wrong — these nuns are not only the heart of the local community, they can dance! All this becomes apparent at exactly the moment the plot demands it, with the arrival of an evil commercial developer who wants to demolish the convent, with the old nuns sent to an inhumane retirement home.
So, rather than go quietly into the night, the sisters decide to abscond with Brian in tow and find the deed to the property, fight the developers, and keep the church intact — though what it actually does for the community, beyond throwing garden parties and giving octogenarians an excuse to swing their hips, is never made clear. Cue road trip clichés, too many scenes of nuns acting ‘outrageous’, unearned sentimentality, and close-ups of snowglobes.
Judy Davis works miracles by somehow turning in an admirable performance in the midst of all this muck; Jacki Weaver likewise holds her own, while Miriam Margoyles at least performs the crass physical comedy she’s been assigned with gusto, never tiring of losing her dentures.
This film was made with such laziness and lack of imagination that virtually every element is lacking: dialogue is gratingly obvious; scenes are poorly constructed, musical cues are unpleasant, moments of apparent emotional impact abruptly follow crude comedy, without anything like a smooth transition, special effects are lousy, Maori language is incorporated to give this film the pretense of being anything other than Anglo-nostalgia, even the lighting is bad.
Nat Boltt’s feature debut Holy Days is a lazy, unthinking comedy that would leave even a six-year-old unchallenged and unentertained.
All we can do now is pray.
