Miriam Margolyes, Judy Davis and Jacki Weaver are the marquee names in Holy Days. says that still is not enough to make the film work. The review lands while the film is out in Australian cinemas now, and its verdict is blunt: the writing leaves the cast carrying too much of the load.
Holy Days and the convent quest
Holy Days follows three stubborn old nuns and a wide-eyed young whippersnapper on a mission to save a convent, with the land at risk and a property deed as the goal. Nat Boltt adapted Dame Joy Cowley’s novel for the screen, setting the story against New Zealand landscapes and pushing the group into a road movie structure that should have given the comic beats room to breathe.
The problem is that the quest loses force halfway through, when the story reveals something that is meant to be amusing but instead drains the central drive. Once that turns up, the film’s basic question changes from whether the convent can be saved to whether the journey still has a purpose at all.
Judy Davis and Jacki Weaver
Judy Davis appears as Sister Agnes, Miriam Margolyes as Sister Luke and Jacki Weaver as Sister Mary Clare, a trio the review calls stacked. That is exactly why the criticism cuts through: the strongest thing Holy Days has on paper is the very thing says cannot rescue the film from an oddly threadbare storyline and comedy aimed at low-hanging fruit.
The review’s examples make the problem plain. Sister Agnes lights a cigarette, Sister Luke’s dentures fly out after she takes a toke, one nun farts in bed, and Brian blurts, “You did a sin! You should be prostituted!” The jokes are not spaced to build momentum; they are used as substitutes for escalation, and the review says the laughs end up few and far between.
Elijah Tamati as Brian
Elijah Tamati plays Brian, the young character travelling with the nuns while trying to adapt to his father’s new romantic partner after his mother’s death, with Craig Hall playing the father. That personal strand should have widened the story beyond the convent plot, but the review’s complaint is that the film keeps reaching for easy punchlines instead of letting the emotional setup do the work.
By the time Holy Days reaches its dance-off scene and the review’s final “Goodbye, convent!”, the film has already spent its strongest asset. Viewers deciding whether to go in Australian cinemas now should read the verdict as a warning: if the appeal is the cast, the writing does not meet them halfway.
