The Van tells the story of two middle-aged, unemployed Irishmen, Bimbo (Donal O'Kelly) and Larry (Colm Meaney), who decide to go into business selling fish and chips out of a mobile food wagon--like the ones you can buy tacos from in South Tucson. They're both married with kids; their lives are unglamorous, their houses are messy, and their favorite pastime seems to be the time-honored double-bill of drinking and vomiting. I think these guys are supposed to be lovable losers, but I couldn't really grasp the lovable part. Maybe if I were Irish; but I'm not, and I found Bimbo and Larry to be loud, drunken, angry characters who mostly panicked and yelled, Irish versions of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. This is rather trying.

When Bimbo and Larry go into business together, their friendship begins to deteriorate--no surprise there. This movie is mostly about the tension that builds between these guys, and the conflict between making money and staying friends. Essentially, it's an art-house buddy movie. Meanwhile, the van hits the more obvious of obstacles: trouble with health inspectors, trouble with unruly customers, including those testosterone-soaked bad boys, heavy metal fans. These episodes are intended to be funny or touching, I think, but really, I don't see the humor in lobbing chunks of cod out of the back of a truck at a bicyclist. I'm sorry, I just don't.

Some of the secondary characters were more interesting; Bimbo and Larry's wives had a fullness and presence rarely devoted to secondary players with so little screen time. In fact, they seemed very much like characters plucked out of a novel. Larry's wife Maggie (Ger Ryan) has gone back to college and reads George Eliot at the kitchen table. ("Who's he?" asks Larry with annoying predictability.) But as movie characters the wives were oddly unsatisfying. Maybe it's their lack of participation in the plot that makes them seem extraneous, as though they were pasted into the picture later.

Larry's kids make some charming cameos as well: His son Larry (Ruaidrhri Conroy) won't cook burgers because he's a vegetarian, though he's decided fish and chips are acceptable. His daughter Diane (Neili Conroy) is a serious girl seized with hysterical laughter when the van accidentally hits a dog. These scenes are lovely, and have the feel of real life; perhaps this is why this series has found such fans.