Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (2026) Movie Review: A Relentlessly Silly, Scrappy ‘Wizard of Oz’ Riff

Despite what its title might suggest, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is not a raunchy comedy, nor is it a love story. The slightly clunky, overexplained title is an embodiment for the wonky tone created by director David Wain, who used to be among the top writers/directors within absurdist comedy. There isn’t the same market for studio comedies as there was when Wain was making “We Came Together” and “Role Models,” and thus “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is an independent production that feels like a throwback to the scrappy, creative style of his early work. Although there’s a reading of the film as a satire on the idealistic perception of Hollywood and how insincere it actually is (something Wain would obviously know a fair amount about), the film itself is an amusing retelling of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ that goes surprisingly deep in its homages. Not every joke lands, but they’re so fast and frequent that there’s rarely an absence of energy.

Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), whose name is an anagram of sorts for “Dorothy Gail,” has lived in a small town in Kansas for her entire life, and is engaged to marry her boyfriend of many years, Tom (Michael Cassidy). Although there’s nothing to suggest tension within their relationship, Gail picks up on a conversation during her job as a hairstylist about “celebrity sex passes,” which sparks a discussion with Tom about which famous person they’d be willing to let the other sleep with. Gail doesn’t expect Tom to literally get intimate with his chosen celebrity crush (who, without spoiling it, is revealed in an amusingly self-aware cameo), and decides to journey with her co-worker Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to Los Angeles. After a meeting with a fortune teller, Gail becomes convinced it is her destiny to even out the playing field by sleeping with her celebrity of choice: Jon Hamm.

The “Wizard of Oz” allusion goes even further when Gail and Otto collect a group of friends upon their journey into the wild, wonderful world of Hollywood; there’s the struggling CAA agent Caleb (Ben Wang), the undershelved celebrity photographer Vincent (Ken Marino), and John Slattery as a version of himself who hasn’t been given many career opportunities in the wake of his run with Hamm on ‘Mad Men.’ Contrived reasons are given for each of them to reach Hamm, but the story also has its “Wicked Witch” in the criminal mastermind (Sabrina Impacciatore), who dispatches her hitmen Sergio (Joe Lo Truglio) and Niccolo (Mather Zickel) to track down Gail after she accidentally obtains a stash of secret CIA documents. There’s no shortage of other celebrities cameos, most of whom have worked with Wain previously, but the film is impressively able to give each of them a comedy scene to play off of; at no point does it feel as if Wain is getting his famous friends to replace an actual joke.

That the logic of the story is flimsy is something that is brought up frequently, as Wain continues a tradition most prominent in “We Came Together” where the film constantly lampoons the parameters of its structure and the constraints of its production. This is escalated even further because “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” was clearly made on the cheaper end, and there are some clever gags relating to the types of Hollywood attractions popular among tourists who wouldn’t know any better. Even if there are some jokes at the expense of CAA, tabloid journalism, and Hamm’s previous projects, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” rarely feels like an in-joke. That the characters so earnestly accept every unusual narrative misdirection is essential to retaining the irreverent tone.

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Although there’s a number of sight gags, the key to “Gail Dauhgtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is within the line deliveries. There are laugh-out-loud jokes, but they’re effective because of how committed the core five group of actors are to honoring their character archetypes; the genuine enthusiasm for the material helps because of how inherently repetitive the humor is, given that there are a number of running jokes and callbacks. Deutch strikes a balance between sincerity and optimism that makes Gail a character who is both worthy of investment and gullible to a fault; it might not seem like a difficult performance, but Deutch’s ability to be silly without becoming a caricature makes it hard to imagine any other actress in her age range nailing the part. Her co-stars are all, thankfully enough, in on the joke; Wang is humorously both the most professional and childlike of the group, Marino adds a self-seriousness that turns Vincent into a colorful parody of a grizzled veteran, and Gutierrez-Riley develops a strong repertoire with Deutch that makes it believable enough that they are lifelong friends. As for Slattery, it’s admirable that he’s able to take a self-satricial part and turn it all the way around into a completely original, idiosyncratic version of an actor at the tail end of their career.

Although the criminal subplot mostly exists for the sake of escalating the tension and adding a ticking-time clock element to the story, Wain finds clever ways to riff on the concept of inept criminals, which is no small statement given how often they’re used in satire films for the butt of the joke. Equally surprising is the fact that Hamm himself is not just a catalyst for the story, but someone who has a key part to play in the third act. He’s shown time and time again that he’s more interested in being a character actor than a leading man in the aftermath of “Mad Men,” and playing a satirical version of himself might be confirmation of that goal.

The best aspect of “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is that the film is able to become farcically bizarre in a way that makes any plot development feel consistent, and it thankfully doesn’t slip into surreality as an easy escape. That so much of the story doesn’t actually end up mattering would be an issue if the film wasn’t keenly aware of that fact, as it’s refreshing to see a comedy that has absolutely no interest in unearned sincerity. “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is padded with a higher joker-to-minute ratio than most contemporary comedies, and it has the good sense to not overstay its welcome.