Although the tagline insists this bleakly hilarious Dublin comedy centres on a smacked-up Laurel and Hardy waiting for Godot, there's a chemical-induced cruelty about Mark O'Halloran and Tom Murphy that was absent from both Stan and Ollie and Waiting For Godot's Vladimir and Estragon. If anything, the duo more resemble an inarticulate Pete and Dud trapped in a Joycean day in the life, as they prowl the city and its seedier estates in search of anything that can alleviate the pain of being themselves.
Each encounter with another despising acquaintance and every cockeyed scam labels them losers. But the same eejits who botch the mugging of a Down's Syndrome teen wind up doting meekly on a friend's baby. Screenwriter O'Halloran makes an admirably world-weary stooge, but Murphy excels as the eager, accident-prone clown.