Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass hits theaters on July 10.
By Elazar Abrahams
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a rolicking, hilarious time at the movies. It’s very much not for everyone, but if you are on director David Wain’s wavelength, and if his Wet Hot American Summer and They Came Together are your sacred comedy texts, this is going to be a new favorite. Those two films are an A+ in my book, and while Gail Daughtry does not quite reach that level, nor do I think it will occupy the same all-time spot in the canon, it is still the funniest movie of the year.
Gail, played by the always delightful Zoey Deutch, is a small-town Kansas hairdresser engaged to her high school sweetheart, Tom. The two have a theoretical “celebrity sex pass” agreement, until Tom actually uses his! Reeling from the betrayal, Gail heads to Hollywood with a new mission: even the scales by sleeping with her own celebrity pass, Jon Hamm.
From there, the movie becomes a deeply silly, absurdist quest with lots of Hollywood in-jokes, complete with oddball allies, celebrity cameos, and visual gags.. It is a credit to Wain and co-writer (and star) Ken Marino that the movie never treats its own ridiculousness like a liability. It knows exactly what it is doing.
Deutch is a huge reason the whole thing works. She has a seemingly endless reservoir of charm, and she makes Gail instantly likable without sanding off how naive and strange she can be. She nails the sweetness and the comic commitment, really selling the premise with complete sincerity.
The supporting cast is also stacked with people who understand this kind of comedy. Marino is especially funny as Vincent, a retired paparazzi photographer. John Slattery, who plays himself, is also a standout, taking excellent shots at his own career and proving, once again, that actors with impeccable dramatic chops can be devastatingly funny when they are willing to look ridiculous.
And then there is Jon Hamm. Many before me have pontificated that the man is low-key one of our great comedic actors, which should not still feel like a surprise after Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and so many other appearances where he has been willing to weaponize his own handsomeness. Here, playing himself, he becomes both the object of Gail’s quest and the movie’s version of the great and powerful Oz. He is built up as this almost mythical figure in everyone’s imagination, only for the reality to be much funnier, smaller, and stranger.
That Wizard of Oz parallel is one of the movie’s sneakiest throughlines. Gail is from Kansas. She gathers a ragtag group on her way through a surreal dream version of Hollywood. Hamm becomes the wizard figure, not exactly what everyone imagined, but still weirdly capable of helping people get what they want. The movie does not require you to pick up on that structure to enjoy it, but once it clicks, especially after the mafia villain chasing Gail yells “I’ll get you, my pretty!” you can’t unsee it. Oh yeah, there’s a mafia hit subplot.
What Wain does so well, and what I find so funny, is the kind of joke that is almost too dumb to explain. He will take a gag, keep repeating until the horse is so dead and beaten that the joke is no longer funny, then keep it going long enough until it wraps back around to become funny again. I’m thinking of a particular scene where a character gets their foot stuck in a slammed door upwards of 25 times. That is a real skill. Plenty of comedians try to have their shtick be whimsical and “random.” Very few understand the true rhythm of the craft well enough to make that actually be hilarious.
This is also just the kind of movie that reminds you how good it feels to guffaw in a theater. Again, your mileage will vary. If this particular brand of heightened absurdity and nonsensical goofiness makes you want to run for the hills, this ain’t for you.
I give Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass an A.
