From Guys And Dolls to Sister Act (and probably dozens more examples), pop culture has long had a place for stories about delinquents and hoodlums finding salvation through organized religion. And now, as part of the publicity campaign for their upcoming film Sisters, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have offered up their own, suitably jaundiced take on the tradition: “Sisters Helping Sisters,” a mock-trailer-style comedic vignette that finds the two SNL veterans starring as habit-wearing nuns tasked with rehabilitating Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson of Comedy Central’s Broad City. After years of gambling, vandalism, and strangling the comatose, Glazer and Jacobson are hauled in front of a no-nonsense judge who is appalled by their criminal record. Only the seemingly divine intervention of Fey and Poehler saves the Broad City ladies from near-certain incarceration. “These girls are going to answer to a higher power,” promises Poehler, winking a bit too dramatically at the camera.
At first, of course, not everything goes smoothly. The Broad City gals keep insisting, for instance, that rosary beads must have some other, more intimate purpose. “You don’t put them in anything,” Poehler explains patiently. “Just put them in your hand.” Some votive candles are repurposed as bongs, too, and the Broad City stars don’t really seem to memorize the “Hail Mary” all that well either. At one point, Glazer opportunistically tries to write herself and Jacobson into Sisters, but Fey nixes that idea quickly. “I don’t think people want to see that many women talking at once,” she says. “I mean, look at The View.” Nevertheless, the rehab program does seem to be an initial success, and the judge lets them off the hook. Abbi and Ilana are grateful, until they realize that they’ve learned the greatest lesson of all: Don’t trust people just because they’re dressed up like nuns.
Sisters opens December 18.