Writer/director Jeff Baena ‘s new movie is very loosely based on a very tiny part of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century classic The Decameron using two of the many bawdy stories to make this amusing comedy of his.  Using a talented cast of actors most of whom are usually found in TV series, a good part of The Little Hours seems like it also would have been a better fit on the small screen too.

The year is 1347 in Italy which is difficult to remember at times as the nuns in this Catholic convent pepper their assorted range of broad American accents with curse words that were not created until several centuries later.  It is because that this is no ordinary bunch of (ir)religious Sisters. For example Alessandra Alison Brie is bitter because her once wealthy father Paul Reiser had dumped her there simply because he could no-longer afford the necessary dowry to marry her off.

The Mother Superior Molly Shannon turns a blind eye to most of the younger nuns shenanigans as she gives ‘nightly comfort’ to the priest Father Tomasso John C. Reilly  when he isn’t liberally knocking back the supply of Communion wine.

One day on a trip to the nearby town to sell some of the nuns embroidery Father T gets drunk and has an accident with his cart losing its entire load.  He is rescued by a servant called Massetto   a very impressive Dave Franco) who is on the run having been caught by his master (Nick Offerman) fornicating with his wife (Lauren Weedman). The Priest strikes a deal with Massetto to offer him sanctuary and work in the Convent as the Handyman has just walked out as the nuns had kept abusing him. He convinces the young servant that to make it work, he must pretend to be a deaf and dumb mute so that the nuns would leave him alone.

However seeing this hunky new stranger working amongst them none of the Sisters think for a single moment about abusing like his predecessor,  and they  just want to bed him instead and lose their virginity.  Something that the rather hunky and horny Massetto is happy to oblige them with.

Part slapstick, part farce this surprisingly tame adult comedy never really delivers the outright laughs that it promised at the beginning, and in the end you have this very distinct feeling that the cast had much more fun making it than we did watching.