If there ever were a list of films with unintentionally apt titles, director Steven Brill’s (“Little Nicky,” 2000) comedy “Walk of Shame,” starring Elizabeth Banks (“The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” 2013) and James Marsden (“Anchorman: The Legend Continues,” 2013), would be among those receiving this dubious honor. Banks is local KZLA reporter Megan Miles, who’s looking for her big break in the broadcast news industry—which she finds out is within her grasp when she’s contacted for an interview with a national news channel. 

Because this wouldn’t be a movie without any impending conflict, she gets dumped by her boyfriend and decides to go bar-hopping with her besties, accidentally locks herself out of one, meets and hooks up with a cute bartender (Marsden)—and self-confessed aspiring writer of a “postmodern romance”—she meets. Realizing she needs to be back home to audition for her big break early the following day, she slips out of his house, which triggers a series of unfortunate events that continue to happen to make the most out of dragging Megan through the titular “Walk of Shame.”

If you thought the basic structure sounded familiar, you’d be right—Martin Scorsese’s black comedy “After Hours” (1985) is about a man who meets a woman in a cafe, eventually abandons the date, and realizes he’s left with no money, and is thrown into (you guessed it) a series of unfortunate events that get progressively worse for the viewers’ entertainment and at the cost of its protagonist. Brill’s “Walk of Shame” is basically “After Hours” if the movie was written to force the unrelenting comedy of errors throughout its runtime instead of—oh, I dunno—making it feel believably funny in the world it creates.

The worst part? Brill phenomenally wastes the proven comedic chops of Banks, Gillian Jacobs (“Community,” 2009-present), and Sarah Wright (“Celeste and Jesse Forever,” 2012) toward jokes without timing, a punchline, or even chuckle-worthy insight. Somehow, the one silver lining in the movie is Alphonso McAuley (“Breaking In”), whose “BITCH FROM THE NEWS” routine every time he crosses Bank’s protagonist has some of the most sublime timing to balance its own crassness out. It’s the funniest bit in a painfully unfunny movie, and sometimes, you just have to… count your blessings, for lack of a better phrase.

For what it’s worth, the film looks serviceable enough, too; there’s no particular personality in “Walk of Shame,” but it’s hard to deny the crew functionally succeeded in what they set out to—and you know what? That’s perfectly fair. Cinematographer Jonathan Brown (“Monte Carlo,” 2011) gives the movie a look that can only be compared to a mix between every real estate commercial and episodes of your favorite slick-lookin’ network TV show. Ditto for composer John Debney (“Iron Man 2,” 2010), for whom—it feels like—it must have been yet another paycheck. It’s not an unwatchable film from a purely technical standpoint; the narrative fails “Walk of Shame” more than anything else.

With an overall flat personality, “Walk of Shame” is a comedy without the bite its rehashed concept deserved to make it feel singular—or remotely entertaining—and fails as a viewing experience. Save for a hilarious performance from McAuley, it seems the only thing the makers did right was to name the movie what it is right now; it’s kind of how you’d feel wondering why you paid the price of a ticket to watch it as you make the long journey home. Skip this one.

PS: The credits roll to Best Coast’s “Let’s Go Home,” and while it vaguely makes sense diegetically, and I know what I’m about to follow up with is a reach, I’m not sure if its placement this late in the film was taunting us into existential despair—making us wonder why we never stayed home—but I sure did feel like it.