Walk of Shame
So what swung this film for us was the trailer, it has been on the "to watch" list for a while, a quick look at the trailer and it looked entertaining, funny and Elizabeth Banks in a tight yellow dress, is quite eye-catching! However, some trailers fool you into believing that the whole film is funny, when in reality they have crammed all the best bits into a three minute taster and you are left wanting when you watch the whole movie. Luckily this is not the case with Walk of Shame.
Meghan Miles (Elizabeth Banks) is a news anchor at a local Los Angeles television station, she has been presenting the Live at Five show for sometime when an opportunity for promotion to a large network comes along. Excitement rises as she is down to the last two hopefuls, however disappointment is around the corner when she apparently loses out to her rival. Depressed by the loss of promotion and upset that her boyfriend has left her as well, she is cajoled into going out to, what is now a commiseration drink, rather than the celebration her friends had originally planned. The inevitable drinking and partying ensues and inhibitions are lost and Meghan finds herself stuck on the fire escape of the club they were at. Luckily hunky help arrives in the form of the film's love interest Gordon (James Marsden). Gordon rescues Meghan from the fire escape and drives her, in her car to his apartment, for safety and other things.
This all happens within the first 10 to 15 minutes of the film, so it is a very quick scene setter for the major part of the film that follows.
Meghan awakes in the early hours, very much the worse for wear and in this strangers apartment, she cannot find her mobile phone, so uses Gordon's home phone to try to locate it, but fails. She then calls her home number, to pick up any messages and this is when she discovers that her rival for the large network job has been dropped as some skeletons were found in her cupboard, so essentially the new job is Meghan's, but she needs to get back to the TV station to present her normal afternoon show, so that her perspective new employers can see her in action.
Is that clear? And so we arrive at the crux of the story, the jeopardy part shall we say; Meghan is in a strange part of town, no phone and it turns out with no car as well, as it has been towed away. All she has is her car keys and a tight yellow dress and she needs to get to work to prepare for the broadcast later that day.
As a synopsis for the start of a film, it does tend to lend itself to the thoughts that this is not going to be any good, but bear with it, those first scenes where the storyline is laid out are far better in reality than the few paragraphs of waffle you have just read. Also, the next hour or so is a lot more entertaining as we follow Meghan trying to get across town back to the safety of work and that chance of promotion. She has to encounter gun-toting taxi drivers, hookers, the police, drug dealers, crack houses, pervy kids and all manner of undesirables who all manage to get in the way of her reaching her goal.
And yes, that is all the detail you are going to get, watch the trailer and take it from there. There's a lot more fun and adventure in the film that is not shown in the trailer and it is definitely a film to look out for. Elizabeth Banks, who has appeared in Pitch Perfect and The Hunger Games series of films, is lovely to look at and is equally as funny as she attempts to get back to the safety of the KZLA studio. There is a brilliant cast of characters surrounding her, the two cops are really funny, as are the boys from the crack den. And no it is not a serious film at all, there's no real melancholic love moments where the strain is too much for Meghan. There's no soppy "down on your luck" moment, where you're wishing for the lead character to pick themselves up again, it is not based on that feelgood formula, it is a basic jeopardy movie, in the same vein as The Hangover trilogy, or films of that ilk. And it is downright funny.
Walk of Shame is simple in it's story, which is all you need from an entertaining comedy, that and a barrel load of laughs and you will not be disappointed in that regard and that is why it will go on the "to watch again" list, that and the senior female member of the TNiFN panel managed to fall asleep halfway through. Again!
Anyway, enough procrastination and dilatory behaviour, let us away to the culmination of this esteemed and much admired blog; the scores. Walk of Shame trots home with a.....
TNiFN Rating 83%
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