Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
3 hours ago
5 min read

GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS (2026)

Starring Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Ben Wang, Sabrina Impacciatore, Jon Hamm, Joe Lo Truglio, Mather Zickel, Tobie Windham, Fred Melamed, Michael Cassidy, Michael Ian Black, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Richard Kind, Thomas Lennon, Toby Huss, David Wain, Jennifer Aniston, Henry Winkler, Elizabeth Banks, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Paul Rudd, Penn Jillette, Elizabeth Perkins and Robert Herjavec.

Screenplay by Ken Marino and David Wain.

Directed by David Wain.

Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. 93 minutes. Rated R.

A celebrity sex pass. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: “A celebrity (or celebrities) that your significant other would allow you to fuck if you ever get the chance to, which you most probably won't. It is crucial that any and all celebrity passes be decided upon in advance with the agreement of both partners.”

In fact, it’s a surprisingly common thing. Just a couple of years ago at the Philadelphia Film Festival, I met a nice local couple. The woman divulged the fact that the speaker at that evening’s screening – MSNBC reporter Jacob Soboroff, of all people – was her celebrity pass. And her husband was good naturedly taking his wife to see the guy.

That’s because the celebrity sex pass is widely understood as a fantasy social contract – the chances are infinitesimal that it will ever be acted upon. And while I can’t swear that that nice woman didn’t end up hooking up with Jacob Soboroff that night, I think I can very safely guess it did not happen.

But what if it did? What are the ramifications of that? It was an agreement that the couple made – does the other person have the right to feel cheated? Is there any way to move past it without the other partner retaliating? And since it is such an unlikely thing, is retribution even possible?

It’s an odd thing to make a movie about, but then again Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a bit of an odd movie, but I mean that in a good way. It’s broad, it’s goofy, it is ridiculous, it’s over the top, it’s completely unrealistic and it’s undeniably funny. Sometimes really, really funny. Maybe that’s enough.

In fact, even though the celebrity sex pass is the hook the story hangs on, it’s really only a small part of what’s holding the whole thing up.

What Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass really is doing is putting together a surreal, absurdist parody of Hollywood life – from both the outside and the inside. It takes a fish out of water and dunks her into the absolute deep end of La-La land madness.

Gail (Zoey Deutch) is a sweet, optimistic and slightly naive Kansas woman who is a bit of a celebrity in her hometown. Her hometown is one of those incredibly quaint small towns you only see on TV and movies, the type of place where the eccentric locals hold huge festivals in the town square on a nearly weekly basis. Not only is Gail a beloved local hairdresser, but she is also a best-selling writer and journalist. (Don’t ask, just go with it…)

Gail is about to get married to her long-time boyfriend Tom (Michael Cassidy). They are one of those couples – they’ve been together since they were school kids, they do everything together, they finish each other’s sentences. Sure, he’s a bit uptight, but he’s so handsome and everyone thinks they are the perfect couple. Including Gail. Well, that is until that sex pass thing comes up.

She was actually so innocent that she had never heard of the idea before it was explained to her by her hip gay best-friend and business partner Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley). Just as a lark she mentioned it to Tom. Just as a goof, they each choose someone – Gail goes for Jon Hamm and Tom picks Jennifer Aniston. Then Aniston comes to town to do a reading from her latest cookbook. Tom cashes in on his pass, and it throws everything Gail believed about her relationship into chaos.

Otto was going to Los Angeles for a hairdressing convention, and he talked Gail into coming with him and just having a wild time. Then the idea comes up – Gail can get even by seducing Jon Hamm. So even though she has never met the man or even talked to him, she and Otto set about finding the actor, not for the sex but as a weird way to take control of her life.

This leads to Gail and Otto searching LA to try to track down Jon Hamm, eventually getting together a posse of a fired intern from his talent agency (Ben Wang), a paparazzo who has been chasing Jon Hamm like his own white whale (Ken Marino) and even Hamm’s old Mad Men co-star John Slattery.

Naturally, being a production by David Wain and his long-time collaborator Marino (Wanderlust, Role Models, The State) the storyline will not be taking any straight lines. Lots of weird little subplots pile up – the mix-up of a top-secret briefcase, Italian gangsters, an unbelievably accurate psychic, a party-mad celebrity hairdresser, a philosophical bodyguard. Some of it doesn’t work. The Italian gangsters subplot goes particularly off the rails when it gets surprisingly violent, even if it was done cartoonishly – but even that has some true laughs, no matter how ludicrous the plot turns may be.

Slattery, Hamm and Aniston all gamely lampoon their public personas with gusto. Slattery gets the most screen time and good-naturedly portrays himself as a bit of a chicken, self-absorbed, a bit pathetic and on the downside of his career. Hamm – who is always good in comic roles – is both larger-than-life and a bit neurotic. Aniston in particular is not afraid to play a slightly undignified version of herself – whether reading from a cookbook awkwardly to sleeping with a strange guy just because he told her that she was his celeb pass – but she does it with such charming self-confidence that you can’t help but see why she was his choice.

In fact, Gail Daughtry has a whole gaggle of celebs playing heightened comic versions of themselves. Beyond Slattery, Aniston and Hamm, we also see Henry Winkler, Weird Al Yankovic, Elizabeth Banks, Penn Jillette, Elizabeth Perkins and Paul Rudd pop up in a scene or two for good-natured cameos. None are vitally important to the film – in fact, Rudd doesn’t even get any dialogue or plot function, he just smiles for the camera and radiates Ruddiness. And yet having all these celebs just showing up randomly somehow gives the film more of a sense of existing in Los Angeles, where famous people may be at the next restaurant or down the street at any moment.

But the film is anchored by the guileless performance of Deutch. She embraces Gail’s eternal good nature and keeps the same sense of stubborn optimism, no matter how many curveballs life throws at her. Deutch stays completely, wonderfully in sunny character whether she is sightseeing on Hollywood Boulevard, being cheated on by her fiancé, breaking into Weird Al Yankovic’s mansion, fighting off dozens of bad guys or trying to seduce a man she has never met other than on television.

Gutierrez-Riley, Wang and Marino all bring quirky charm to their very different sidekick characters, each bringing surprising nuance and depth to what could be cliched stereotypical characters.

It’s a strange mix of characters, but somehow, they all fit into the film’s oddball rhythm – and that rhythm is what ultimately carries the movie.

The celebrity sex pass may be a joke couples toss around without ever expecting consequences, but Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass turns that throwaway idea into a surprisingly sweet, consistently funny, and proudly ridiculous comedy. It’s not aiming for greatness – just genuine laughs – and it hits that target with more style than you’d expect.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEbaLieo_Kw