Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a movie that wants to be silly and still hold your attention and entertain you, a high-wire act that few films can pull off. The early Marx Brothers movies and Airplane! are examples of sustained silliness, but in recent years, such films have been scarce. One of the best, 2021's Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, was a Kristen Wiig vehicle that flew under the radar due to the COVID pandemic.
The Art of Silliness
A deliberately silly movie needs to evoke the real world to get us involved in the story it's telling and then create its own bonkers reality. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass achieves this, with a plot that's easy to summarize: a content small-town Kansas girl discovers her fiancé with another woman and determines to have a last fling herself before marriage. She sets her sights on Jon Hamm, and the movie turns into a demented takeoff on The Wizard of Oz.
The film features a talented cast, including Zoey Deutch as Gail, John Slattery as a shadow-boxing, Mad Men alum, and Ken Marino as a disgraced paparazzo. Director David Wain and cowriter Marino have been working together for a quarter century, and their experience shows in the film's polished look and feel. IMDb users may recognize some of the cast from their previous work.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a screamingly funny movie that doesn't have an idea in its head, and that's what makes it so charming. It's a film that will leave you happy and stupid, like a laughing crowd in a dark theater. So, go see it, it opens this weekend, and it's a favor to yourself.