Directed by Nat Boltt
Certificate 12a
101 minutes
Released 14 August

New Zealand, 1974. A young boy, Brian (Elijah Tomati) is sent round to the nuns for ‘blasphemery’. The kindly Sister Agnes (Judy Davis) hands him to the lively Sister Mary Clare (Jacki Weaver) to do all the upstairs floors as a penance. It’s a mark of this genial comedy that nun and boy do the task using waxed cloths to glide around the floor.

Although it never loses sight of entertaining its audience, this is a film with bigger fish to fry. The reason for Brian’s outburst is that he doesn’t like Liz (played by the director Nat Boltt), the woman who has taken his late mum’s place. And that’s because he’s never quite come to terms with his mum’s passing. And both he and his mum are of Maori descent.

Meanwhile, dastardly diocesan plans are afoot with the new bishop in cahoots with a property developer who wants to demolish the convent, a ramshackle old house. Getting wind of this, the two nuns, along with their demented companion Sister Luke (Miriam Margolyes), drive across country to former sister Patricia (Tanea Heke), who keeps the deeds safe. Brian begs to come along, unaware that Patricia, also of Maori descent, is his aunt.

Thus, the journey will have legal consequences for the sisters and deeply personal ones for Brian.

Mostly likeable rather than laugh-out-loud funny, this paints a sympathetic picture of Christian religion while respecting indigenous Maori ideas in addition to Christian ones about death and the afterlife. Elijah Tomati is genuinely affecting as Brian, while the three stars’ turns as very different nuns prove hugely satisfying.

Davis is the one in charge, trying perhaps a little too hard to be a good role model for the others. Weaver has a constant twinkle in her eye and is full of the joys of life. The wickedly funny Margolyes, clearly losing it, constantly makes inappropriate yet strangely pertinent comments, such as quoting Ezekiel 23: 20…

And it’s impossible to dislike a film in which, when a character is threatened with transfer to a care home named Nazareth, a young boy describes it as ‘not the one in the Bible.’ It’s a family film that will win you over.

Jeremy Clarke is a film critic. His website is jeremycprocessing.com