I’m probably one of the world’s biggest fans of Pitch Perfect and ever since I learned that the film was produced by Elizabeth Banks, I swore to try harder to like the chick. I don’t know why, but she never really appealed to me.
I chanced upon the trailer of this movie a couple of months ago and thought, why not? It looks harmless enough and it has been a while since I last saw a chick flick.
So here’s my round-up of Steven Brill (Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds)’s Walk of Shame.
Please note that there may be spoilers. Read at your own risk.
THE STORY:
Local network newsreader and self-proclaimed ‘good girl’ Meghan (Elizabeth Banks – Hunger Games: Catching Fire) gives in to the urgings of friends Rose (Gillian Jacobs – Community) and Denise (Sarah Wright – 21 & Over) to spend a whole night of debauchery to 1.) cheer her up from her recent break up with her douchebag fiancé, and 2.) to celebrate a pending promotion of being hired as an anchorwoman of a nationwide network. They go to a bar where she promptly gets wasted enough to hook up with cute bartender Gordon (James Marsden – X-Men: Days of Future Past), whose place she spends the night in. Her attempts at an easy sneak away, however, ground to a halt when she learns that her car has been towed, along with her money and her phone.
So begins her adventures in navigating her own city and trying to find her way home in time for a big meeting with the network people who’re about to be her new bosses.
THE GOOD:
- Elizabeth Banks is super pretty. This probably wasn’t the best film to showcase her acting prowess, but she was super hot. Her comedic timing’s not bad as well although it was pretty much wasted on the material.
- James Marsden. It was a thankless role but he was there to look pretty and be charming, and we all know that he can do that with both arms tied behind his back.
- Sarah Wright for some reason really stood out to me. In a film full of bleh characters, she made slutty Denise memorable.
THE BAD:
- The thinly written story. It’s an injustice to the talented cast that they have to sell this crap. While they do try their best, no amount of effort can salvage this type of story where the characters are all two-dimensional generic people who seem to only exist to rattle off immature jokes.
- Missed opportunities. There was one part in the movie that I felt could’ve turned this film around: when Meghan finally got a hold of a phone but couldn’t use it because she didn’t know anybody’s phone number. I wish that the film makers had expanded on this point and made jokes about how we, as a generation, are too freakin’ reliant on technology that we’ll almost always be crippled without it.
- The so-called ‘character growth’. Because Meghan was so poorly written, the big hallelujah moment at the end didn’t really have that much impact.
THE UGLY:
- It asked the audience to suspend our disbelief over some things that would never ever happen in this day and age. Okay, i know that the whole point of paying for and sitting down to watch a movie is to basically willingly suspend your disbelief and just go with whatever bull that the film makers show you on screen. In the hands of a more mature director, sure, maybe the story of a grown up white woman lost in her own city could be something realistic, but as it is, unfortunately, we are left with a mess mostly made up of juvenile and racist jokes.
All in all The Walk of Shame is pretty much bleh as it gets. It had its moments, and it truly did feel like the cast were trying their best to make the most of what they’ve been given but there was just to saving the material.
THE VERDICT: 4.9/10. Not worth your trip to the cinemas.
*All photos are lifted from the film’s IMDB page.
