If I ever hear Charlie Day ask “I’m sorry, what?” again in my lifetime, it will be too soon. The star of long-running TV series It’s Only Sunny in Philadelphia headlines 2017 high school comedy Fist Fight like an poor quality record stuck in a groove, spoiling whatever potential the film had with an egregious, genuinely one-note performance. Bad Hollywood comedies are generally bad for a multitude of reasons. Here I swear one can almost entirely drop the blame into Day’s lap. His is a grating, unfunny performance that weakens every scene that he touches.

Lest I seem too cruel: I have not seen any of Day’s hugely successful TV show, nor do I seem to have seen his film performances beyond cartoon voices. In Fist Fight, at least, he seems like comedy poison. Perhaps he is better in other things.

Day plays meek and weaselly English teacher Andy Campbell, awaiting word on whether or not he is being laid off during the last teaching day of the year. A series of unfortunate and improbable events sees him inform on colleague Ron Strickland (Ice Cube), a rage-fuelled and violent history teacher, leading to Strickland’s firing. Strickland then challenges Campbell to an old school after-school fist fight, leading to Campbell spending the entire day desperately attempting to resolve the situation before he gets beaten up.

It is a funny enough concept for a populist Hollywood comedy, and it benefits from reasonably funny performances by Cube, Tracy Morgan, and Jillian Bell. It also runs a mainly amusing line in end-of-school pranks by the graduating year. At the same time it places the entire narrative around Andy Campbell, and neither the character nor its actor seems able to support that. The film, written by Van Robichaux and Evan Susser (both writers on Brooklyn Nine-Nine), clearly expects the audience to sympathise with Campbell. His behaviour makes that difficult, and Day’s weirdly shouty and mannered performance makes it difficult to watch. In many ways it leads to the worst sort of comedy: the one where the jokes are often genuinely good, but which collapse due to a failure to effectively deliver them. At least part of the blame for that failure must lie with the director. Richie Keen, like his writers, comes from television, and any skill he has in a 22-minute format does not easily extend to 90.

To their collective credit, the film actually hits some great comedy beats during its much-hyped finale. Such a shame, then, that events needlessly continue for a solid 10 minutes beyond that. It is a mistake based on the belief that Campbell is an interesting character, or that is audience needs every narrative check-box ticked and open story thread resolved. Truth be told, I don’t think anyone watching is going to care that much.