Ah, the woes of Ireland, where the blood-and-drink-sodden heroics of Cuchulainn have been replaced by the “Jersey Shore”-like girl-punching of “interMission.” A title like “interMission,” with that spelling, screams “no direction,” backed up by a blurb on the box that says something indeterminate about the lives of an ensemble cast being affected from one couple’s experience breaking up. There are some car chases, shots fired, rocks through windows, pints drunk and old ladies being laughed at for trying to find dates. There are a lot of people who very nearly get killed in uncomfortable ways. It’s a little desperate, a little quirky, a little dramatic, a little funny, and a whole lot impossible for repeat viewings.

The break up (there are actually two break ups, not that it matters) is never actually central to the plot. There’s Colin Farrell (who only stops bashing women in the face to admire woks), the girl who played Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter films (who has a shadow of a mustache and isn’t so much into guys because one of them tied her up and defecated on her), and Colm Meany (whose far-ranging resume includes roles as Tom O’Flanagan, Gin O’Malley, Chief O’Brien, Gerry McGurn and Kelly in “Far and Away”).

Meany plays a boxing cop with a fondness for Clannad whose best moment comes far too soon in “Intermission” — Colin Farrell disrespects his wife, so he pins him to a bathroom wall and pees on him. The young people mostly gab while earning a living at a grocery store where their boss says things like, “TCB, as they say in the States; take care of business.” Later on, he gets a hard can of peas chucked into his head and the entire store, rather darkly even if he is a jerk, applauds.

The strongest, best part of this too-schooled chaff is Kelly MacDonald, who not only has to suffer the indignity of one of Colin Farrell’s punches, but also one of the movie’s recurring “token wife/girlfriend” parts. Instead of screeching, though, she turns her heat down to the lowest setting and goes completely deadpan and glowering with the ridiculous plot:

“Did you know John and Oscar broke into Fruitfield a few months back, stole a crate load of Chef Sauce?” she tells her mother, referring to a sort of A1-ey style squeeze condiment. “And I know that wasn’t the only time. It was all they could get. I’d be over at his place, he’s making sauce sandwiches. Putting it in his cornflakes. Trying to use it all up. In his tea. I mean, he dumps me, Ma, breaks my heart and then has the gall to come over and call me a whore and a blackguard for not taking the fucking vows? Well, fuck him. Him and his brown sauce. Sorry, Ma.”

MacDonald would be enjoyable reading transcripts of “The Hills.” She deserves better than the indignity of shouldering movies that include Colin Farrell singing “I Fought the Law.”

“interMission” is the kind of piece that might have made a tolerable short but seems to have turned into feature length because the filmmakers’ usual audience is a critique group who, one, has to sit all the way through everything and two, gets major props for the most creative ways they can scavenge meaning from avant-gardey forays into the the “underbelly” of suburban dissatisfaction. Irish director John Crowley desperately aspires to be his English colleague Danny Boyle. Ironically, as Meany’s character tells Farrell’s, Crowley lacks “the requisite Celtic soul.”

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies that aren’t in theaters anymore.