Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

by Mike McGranaghan

It’s been a long time since a movie made me laugh as often and as hard as Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass did. This latest effort from director David Wain and co-writer Ken Marino (they of Role Models and Wanderlust fame) is an unapologetically loony comedy that keeps getting funnier the longer it goes on. The film’s commitment to extreme silliness is truly impressive.

Kansas hairdresser Gail Daughtry (the always delightful Zoey Deutch) is engaged to marry her high school sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy). They have one of those playful discussions where they each pick a “celebrity sex pass” – a famous person they’d hypothetically be allowed to sleep with if the chance ever arose. The chance unexpectedly arises for Tom, who promptly takes it. Gail figures that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, so she heads to Hollywood with best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) in order to sleep with her own sex pass, Jon Hamm.

Wain and Marino envision the story as a wacko version of The Wizard of Oz. Gail has no connection to Hamm, so she assembles a ragtag group of people to help her on the quest. They are former paparazzo Vincent (Marino), talent agency intern Caleb (Ben Wang), and Hamm’s Mad Men co-star John Slattery, who deserves some sort of award for gamely playing a comically demented version of himself. The Wicked Witch is represented by Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore), an international criminal who sends her flying monkeys - I mean henchmen - after Gail when she accidentally picks up a suitcase containing sensitive information.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass smartly establishes from the beginning that its tone is going to be exaggerated. Nothing about the story is even remotely realistic, and anything can happen as long as it’s funny. There are self-referential jokes, crazy celebrity cameos, and frequent detours into bits that have nothing to do with anything but are inspired nonetheless. In that last category, a gag involving Slattery trying to prevent a door from closing by sticking his foot in the gap had me in absolute stitches. The movie is almost Airplane!-like in how fast the jokes come flying at you.

The cast members know exactly how to make the material sing. Deutch is wonderful as Gail, giving her a lovably daffy personality. She gets across that the character is in over her head yet unfailingly determined to find Jon Hamm and sleep with him, regardless of how improbable that sounds. Ken Marino has fun spoofing paparazzi, playing Vincent as a Captain Ahab-like figure, obsessing over Hamm being the one star he was never able to get a candid photo of. Speaking of Hamm, it is no spoiler to say he’s in here, too, sending up his image as an A-lister and doing it magnificently.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is one of those eminently quotable comedies. “I’m going to make you real sick” deserves to be the catchphrase of the summer. The screenplay Wain and Marino wrote is packed with great lines. I don’t know how well the movie will fare at the box office; I am, however, willing to bet that it will eventually be revered in the same way Wain’s 2001 comedy Wet Hot American Summer is.