Film Brain reviews this French comedy about nuns who get on their bike, which relies heavily on the fact that nuns are inherently amusing. Its mostly right.
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00:00The French comedy Oh My Goodness can be summed up in just three words, Nuns on Bikes. Yes,
00:05Nuns on Bikes. Valerie Bonneton is the mother superior to a group of bumbling nuns who enter
00:10a mountainside bicycle race to win the prize money for a hospice. But they'll have to compete
00:15against a rival group of nuns led by Bonneton's childhood rival, Sidsie Bebette Knudsen.
00:20This is the final film of director Laurent Tourard, who passed away in 2024 and is probably
00:25best known for Asterix and Obelix, God Save Britannia, and it's that kind of broad comedy
00:30you can find here. The film is at its best when it leans into its absurdist side, especially
00:34with the nuns telling scary stories about exorcisms or Bonneton having a fantasy sequence
00:39about meeting the Pope. The fact that the nuns are useless at cycling means you get
00:43some amusing slapstick and I particularly like the running gag about Bernadette,
00:47the nun who has taken a vow of silence and communicates entirely with a whiteboard.
00:52When Knudsen's nuns show up, I do think some of the early momentum starts to dissipate as the
00:57big lars become more scattered as their rivalry takes the focus. But there's something inherently
01:02amusing about nuns getting up to bad behaviour and when all else fails, just have someone in
01:06a habit drop a blasphemy or several because that always gets a laugh and bonus points for any extra
01:12four letter words. It's predictably scattershot and flimsy but it's also a breezy, lightweight
01:18comedy that, I must confess, made me smile.