Holy Days is a twinkly and comforting National Treasure Road Movie about three New Zealand nuns who go on a road trip to try and stop their convent being pulled down by a nasty developer.
Miriam Margolyes, Jacki Weaver and Judi Davis play the valiant sisters trying to locate the property deeds that will avert the disaster. Along for the ride is Brian, a motherless lad angry at dad’s new partner. A bit of a softie, maybe Brian will be annealed by time spent with Sisters Mary Clare (Weaver), Agnes (Davis) and Luke (Margolyes) as they pootle towards the South Island, where a former nun, now a lawyer, may be able to get them out of trouble.
Margolyes has the least to do, since Sister Luke is semi-demented and barely knows where she is most of the time. But she winks away warmly, shows her bum at one point and says “rumpy-pumpy” twice, probably to please fans of her appearances on TV chat shows, where she regularly gets away with saying the sort of things that get most guests banned for life.
Davis’s Sister Agnes is the organiser, the role suiting Davis’s particular strength at playing austere women, while Weaver’s Sister Mary Clare is the one with a back story and some emotion to inject. It’s unsettling seeing Weaver being such a sweetheart, especially if you first came across her playing the formidable criminal matriarch in Animal Kingdom, where she was scary as hell.
The whole thing is set in the 1960s, when nuns were generally seen as benign. No sign of Magdalene Sisters stealing your baby and burying it out the back of a home for fallen women in this movie. Nor, at an actorly level, is there any whiff of oneupmanship. Weaver, Davis and Margolyes beam and chuckle and are grace and interplay itself as the three old dears. It’s all appropriately sisterly.
The biggest mistake you could make approaching this movie is to take it too seriously. It’s a warm pastiche of movies that themselves were already corny when grandpa was watching Bing Crosby trying to save the orphanage. And it’s aimed at kids. And once you’ve got that thought on board all the “comedy” shocks about nuns doing the most basic things – having a cigarette or an alcoholic drink or dancing – start to make sense. I think director/writer Nat Boltt (who also plays Liz, Brian’s wicked stepmother figure) is even suggesting at one point that a nun driving a car is in itself funny. When, let’s face it, it isn’t.
The nuns leave the film as they entered it, apart from one – no spoiler – it’s Brian who experiences change, a good thing since, orphan or not, Elijah Tamati’s playing of him leaves us in no doubt that the boy could do with a talking to, or, this being the 1960s, a slap.
Brian’s dead mother was Maori and this opens up a bit of space for some half-hearted inclusiveness and a bit of Maori spirituality without overburdening the elegance of the basic plot – three old dears and a boy in a car.
Jonny Brugh as Father Findlay is rather good in a very familiar way – the drunk Irish priest with a fondness for the horses – but he manages to play the part as if saying “If I may just take this tired old stereotype for one more trot around the paddock I think you will be charmed”. And we are. Or I was, anyway (when your surname’s Morrissey boozy Irish priests have free lodging in your head).
All in all, entirely familiar, borderline ridiculous, feelgood stuff that’s got “happy ever after” engraved in its soul.
Holy Days – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2026
