Rollicking, randy all-star-cast comedy puts a naughty spin on “The Wizard of Oz”
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
Starring Zoey Deutch, Ken Marino, Jon Hamm & John Slattery
Directed by David Wain
R
In theaters Friday, July 10
A multi-layered concept comedy with a motley crew running all over Los Angeles, Gail Daughtery and the Celebrity Sex Pass is the latest absurdly raunchy, ridiculously hyper romp from director David Wain.
Wain’s previous films—like Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models and They Came Together—skewered big-screen tropes with satire and a smirk, and this one’s in a similar vein. It follows a young Midwestern hairstylist, Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), who takes a fish-out-of-water trip to sunny California.
You see, Gail and her fiancé, Tom (Michael Cassidy) made a far-fetched deal, sort of, agreeing that if either of them could have a booty call with their celebrity crush, the other would be free to do the same—in other words, a celebrity sex pass. When Gail finds Tom bonking Jennifer Aniston in the back room of a bookstore, she heads to Tinseltown to hook up with actor John Hamm and “level the playing field.”
Yes, it sounds crazy. And it is, packed with bawdy jokes and bonkers celebrity cameos. In addition to Aniston and Hamm, who play themselves, there’s Henry Winkler, Weird Al Yankovic and Penn Gillette. And isn’t that Paul Rudd as a wedding guest, giving a wink to the camera? Yes, it is!
Actor/comedian Richard Kind is a cab driver. Elizabeth Perkins and Elizabeth Banks have cameos you might miss if you get up to get popcorn. Hamm’s Mad Men co-star, John Slattery, plays a version of himself, one that’s surprisingly well-versed in the art of self-defense. Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Jo Lo Truglio is an inept thug. There’s a map-of-the-stars salesman (Michael Ian Black) and Fred Melamed’s a mailman, narrating the tale looking into the camera…and sometimes into the mailbox. There’s a guy (Robert Herjavec) from Shark Tank! Reno 911’s Thomas Lennon is a rock-star hairdresser, the master of the whip curl, who knows how to use his curling iron as a weapon. Sabrina Impacciatore, from The White Lotus, hams it up as an evil mastermind.
But the real standout here is Deutch. The daughter of actress Lea Thompson and director Howard Deutch embodies the movie’s enthusiasm, its embrace of wide-eyed adventure and its self-assurance that all the wacky comedy is hitting a bullseye. She “sells” it, hammering home the silliness with dynamic self-confidence. She’s come a long way since Disney’s The Suite Life on Deck in 2010!
There’s also a fateful briefcase switcheroo in an airport, a plot to collapse the world economy, bad guys chasing good guys, an abandoned Wild West set and a roll of 35mm camera film that becomes an inspirational touchstone. It feels like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World meets with The Naked Gun, with a Mad Men reunion to boot.
On one level, it’s a sweeping, sexed-up mock-tail toast to Hollywood, with actors playing themselves, paparazzi (The Residence’s Ken Marino, who also co-wrote the movie) lurking in the bushes, bodyguards, a movie pitch and agents from Creative Artists Agency. To top it off, it’s also a loopy salute to one of the most classic films of all time.
You don’t have to dig deep to see the connections to The Wizard of Oz. Gail is the Kansas girl, like Dorothy Gail in the 1939 film, who ventures into a place full of wonder and danger, on a mission with a posse of characters, trying to avoid pursuers—and wearing a pair of ruby red slippers. If you have trouble figuring out who, exactly, is standing in for the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion, Dorothy’s dog Toto, the Wicked Witch and the flying monkeys, stick around for the credits.
As for the Wizard himself, well, you’ll make the connection when one of the characters admits his insecurities about pretending to be someone he’s not, living “behind the curtain” of his fame—and certainly when he drops in later, via hot-air balloon.
Of course, in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy didn’t sing about being “off to see the Wizard” to hop into the sack with him. But Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass doesn’t want us to think too hard about that, or about anything. It just wants to nudge us into some chuckles at its outlandish premise, its random randy-ness, its cavalcade of in-jokes, and its weird, wonderfully wacky spin on someplace way, way over the rainbow—where sex with the stars is a thing, some dreams really do come true, and Weird Al Yankovic hops off his golf cart to chase interlopers away with an Uzi.
–Neil Pond