By George & Josh Bate
There’s a lot of fun to be had in contemplating celebrity hall passes with romantic partners. Both people give their partners permission to hook up with a specific celebrity and, if the opportunity ever arises, the sexual encounter would not be considered cheating. The fun, light-heartedness of celebrity hall passes comes both from their implausibility and hypothetical nature. Neither party believes a sexual encounter with the celebrity hall pass would transpire.
But imagine if such an encounter did transpire. How would the other person react given that, based on the pre-approved agreement, their partner technically did not cheat? This is the jumping off point for Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, an inventive and original comedy unwaveringly committed to absurd, offbeat humor.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass stars Zoey Deutch, an endearingly naive hairstylist living in small town Kansas and engaged to her high school sweetheart Tom (Michael Cassidy). Gail’s idyllic life is turned upside down when Tom meets and subsequently sleeps with his ‘celebrity hall pass.’ Determined to even the score, Gail journeys with her best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to Los Angeles, where she joins forces with a quirky, eclectic group of individuals to search for her celebrity hall pass: Jon Hamm.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass comes from comedy duo David Wain and Ken Marino, who are best known for the Wet Hot American Summer series and the sketch comedy troupe The State. Their latest film exists in the same lineage of Wet Hot American Summer, Reno 911!, and other irreverent, absurdist comedies, yet it has a much broader appeal and isn’t quite as offbeat as their other projects.
Using The Wizard of Oz as the basis for a movie about pursuing one’s celebrity hall pass is an unusual idea to say the least, but one that Wain and Marino pull off masterfully. Every step of the way, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass borrows from the 1939 MGM classic.
Both movies focus on an innocent female protagonist who wears red shoes as she journeys from small town Kansas to a world both wondrous and daunting. Both movies follow this protagonist as she tries to encounter an enigmatic figure (one being The Wizard of Oz and the other being Jon Hamm) and recruits a number of humorous, yet troubled companions along the way.
One movie features a Yellow Brick Road, the other features the decidedly less glamorous Hollywood Walk of Fame. And, without delving into spoilers, both movies cleverly converge on similar conclusions that feel earned from the winding adventure that preceded them.
While heavily borrowing from tropes, themes, and narrative of The Wizard of Oz, Wain and Marino’s film proves exceedingly original nonetheless. Unlike many theatrically released comedies nowadays, which feel a need to blend comedy with another genre to create a dramedy or horror-comedy, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is unabashedly a comedy through and through.
The film is silly, absurd, even juvenile at times, and never takes itself too seriously. Of course, not every joke lands as intended, but the ratio of jokes that do compared to jokes that don’t is high, certainly by modern comedy standards.
Unlike many comedies that wear thin over the course of their runtime and go from funny to frustrating by the time the credits roll, Wain and Marino’s movie remarkably improves as it propels forward. Largely, this is due to the steady introduction of a group of side characters that aid Gail in her pursuit of Jon Hamm.
Ben Wang (Karate Kid: Legends, The Long Walk) plays Caleb, a secretary at CAA whose confidence is both his best friend and worst enemy. Ken Marino (Wet Hot American Summer, The State) portrays a down-on-his-luck member of the paparazzi named Vincent. And John Slattery plays a down-trodden, loser version of himself, whose career has suffered since Mad Men and who cannot get in touch with his old co-star Jon Hamm despite repeated attempts to do so.
Each of these side players roughly map onto one of Dorothy’s companions (i.e., The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion) and have interesting, fleshed-out arcs that offer great opportunities for humor.
Detracting only somewhat from enjoyment of an otherwise delightfully silly comedy is a subplot involving an Italian mobster (Sabrina Impacciatore) and her henchmen. The subplot injects the film with a bit of urgency, especially in the third act, but largely remains peripheral, especially as Gail and the others are blissfully unaware that they are targets of the mob for much of the film.
The movie certainly needs a subplot to add weight and stakes to its story, although the scenes dedicated to the subplot that Wain and Marino land on represent the filmmakers’ rare missteps in their latest venture.
VERDICT: 7/10
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass unfolds from a clever premise and, while ultimately not being much more than an infectiously funny riot, overwhelmingly succeeds in what it sets out to achieve. Comedy veterans David Wain and Ken Marino once again lean into their brand of silly, absurd, and offbeat humor to create one of the year’s great cinematic surprises to date.