Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass: We’re Off to Sleep with the Wizard!
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
I’m glad I had a little while to think about this one. For about a day after I watched Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, I was dismissive of its Airplane (but not quite as good) comedic styling and the over-the-top acting, which felt like it was trying to wear me down.
And yet by day two I was telling family and friends about some of the oddball moments of humour that made no logical sense but also made me laugh.
Things like someone taking a taxi in Hollywood, a scene that uses an establishing shot clearly taken in the 1970s. Or Vincent (Ken Marino), a photographer who tosses a film canister into the air, only to have it remain aloft, out of shot, for just a little longer than gravity should allow. Or John Slattery’s line readings, which include impromptu impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Howard Cosell.
By day four, it was with me still, as I tried to recall some of the B-list, C-list and even D-list celebrity cameos, and figure out whether they were playing themselves, versions of themselves, or just characters. “Weird Al” Yankovic is clearly doing a version of the real Al, unless Yankovic is a lot Weirder than I thought.
The plot is there in the title. Gail (Zoey Deutch) has a conversation with her fiancée Tom (Michael Cassidy) about which celebrity they would allow the other to sleep with. Tom picks Tilda Swinton, then changes his mind after meeting a celebrity at a book signing who ends up giving him more than just her name on a flyleaf.
Gail is distraught and decides that the only way she can level the playing field before the wedding is to sleep with her own celebrity sex pass, Jon Hamm. So, she heads to Hollywood, where screenwriter Ken Marino and writer-director David Wain borrow liberally from The Wizard of Oz, setting Gail up with a trio of wounded accomplices, each with a missing piece.
Read our interview with Ken Marino and David Wain
It’s a crackpot story that also includes a switched suitcase belonging to an inept gangster (Joe Lo Truglio) and his evil boss (Sabrina Impacciatore), not to mention an assistant to the stars (Tobie Windham) who spends a little too long explaining the difference between sympathy and empathy.
It helps that Wain has travelled this yellow brick road before, with parodies of 1980s sex comedies (Wet Hot American Summer) and 1990s rom coms (They Came Together). He also worked with a lot of this film’s cast in the 1990s TV sketch comedy show, The State.
My advice is to see it in as crowded a theatre as possible, because despite the old saying, comedy loves company. The let it marinate for a few days and see if you aren’t also pestering friends and loved ones with retellings of some of its quirky bits and pieces.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. Directed by David Wain. Starring Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, and (maybe) Jon Hamm. In theatres July 10.