Speed Dating

Look at the state of your film, Tony Herbert. You, young man, are not going anywhere until you pick some of this muck off the floor.

This fitful Irish comedy, the story of a wealthy young layabout's attempt to find meaning in life, suffers from a case of chronic narrative disorder that would, I suspect, frustrate the attentions of even the most rigorous script doctor.

Lightly chewed plotlines lie about the place like toys abandoned by an easily bored child. Beneath the sofa we find something or other to do with speed dating. Over here, cast casually into the cat's basket, is a half-hearted experiment in amnesia. Where - survivors of earlier Irish comedies might ask - is the inevitable encounter with a big bag of drugs? Yonder, next to the faintly embarrassing attempt to create a comically eccentric family in the mould of Wes Anderson's Tenenbaum clan.

Hugh O'Conor, still believable as a callow youth, stars as (no, really) James Van Der Bexton, the heir to a fortune, who, hollowed out by privilege, spends his days whining to an eccentric psychiatrist and his nights lying at speed dating sessions. For no good reason, he decides to follow a pretty girl who frequents his local pub and after, an evening spent pottering about dressed as Steve Silver- mint, wakes up in hospital to discover his memory erased.

There are, to be fair, some agreeable performances buried among the accumulating debris. O'Conor exudes his usual nervous charm, and Emma Choy, an antipodean actor of modest experience, makes something believable of the nurse for whom James eventually falls. But Speed Dating- it could as easily have been called Ferret Fancying for all either activity has to do with the plot - never becomes anything more than a disjointed series of half-formed ideas.

Leave its box unticked and move on to the next potential date.