GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS (Tribeca 2026) – Review by Nadine Whitney
A contemporary Wizard of Oz in La La Land, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass comes from David Wain the director of the Wet Hot Summer series. Co-written by Wain and comic actor Ken Marino, Gail Daughtry is a very broad satire about celebrity and the Hollywood machine starring Zoe Deutch as Willowbrook, Kansas’ favourite inhabitant Gail Daughtry – at least according to occasional narrator Frank the postman (Fred Melamed). Gail is a little ray of sunshine in her small town who is very happily about to marry her childhood sweetheart, Tom (Michael Cassidy). A conversation at the hair salon she works in about the “celebrity sex pass” – the one person you can have sex with without repercussions in your romantic relationship, leads to her boyfriend Tom deciding after meeting Jennifer Aniston at a reading of her new recipe book, to go for it immediately. Although Gail had vaguely nominated Mad Men-era Jon Hamm, the last thing she expected was to find Tom in flagrante with a deeply apologetic Jennifer Aniston in the back of a bookstore.
Tom’s unexpected actions leads Gail to decide that she will accompany her very best friend and co-worker Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to a hairdressing expo in Los Angeles, marking the first time Gail has ever left her hometown. At the airport there is a mix up between the suitcase containing Gail’s brushes and hairdressing tools and a suitcase containing documents that “could bring down world governments and banks creating chaos and ending capitalism,” which were en route to the pitiless Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore) who will stop at nothing to ensure the complete destruction of everything.
Gail isn’t aware of the accidental shift and her mind is far more concentrated on how she’ll solve her heartbreak with her fiancé. A particularly insightful psychic tells her the only way to make everything right is for her to find and sleep with Jon Hamm to bring the balance back.
Along the way to find the elusive Hamm she meets CCA intern Caleb (Ben Wang), disconsolate ex-ace paparazzi Vincent (Ken Marino), and an out-of-work John Slattery who spends his time holed up in his fleabag rental practicing self-defence. So, Gail (Dorothy), along with Caleb (the Scarecrow), Vincent (the Tin Man), John Slattery (the Cowardly Lion) and Otto (Toto) go on a chaotic journey to find Jon Hamm who just might be able to solve everyone’s problems if Ludovica and her “flying monkeys” Sergio (Joe Lo Truglio) and Niccolo (Mather Zickel) don’t kill them all first.
Wain’s fish-out-of-water comedy relies heavily on increasingly ridiculous situations to carry the comedy. No stranger to getting silly, Wain’s satire is very rarely anything but silly. Charming performances by Deutch and especially Slattery, Wang, and very game Jon Hamm can’t glue the “situational” aspect of the film together to form something particularly sustained and more than occasionally funny. Set piece after set piece grows tiring even if you’re on board with the over-the-top nature of everything.
Wain does manage to get a fine retinue of his friends to make cameos as “themselves” including Weird Al Yankovich, Henry Winkler, Elizabeth Banks, and (of course) Paul Rudd, but that gimmick only goes so far in notching up the comedy and the satire.
Gail Daughtry and The Celebrity Sex Pass is at its best zany and fun, and at it’s worse zany and too indulgent. The film is certainly watchable because it is populated by actors and comedians people genuinely like, but as an overall experience it wanes.
