The screwball joy "Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass" is about a one-in-a-million lovers' bluff that comes true. Midwestern childhood sweethearts Gail (Zoey Deutch) and Tom (Michael Cassidy) are two weeks from their wedding when the dopey groom-to-be sleeps with Jennifer Aniston, the one star he had joking permission to bonk. To balance the score, Gail and her best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) fly from Kansas to Los Angeles so she can seduce her famous freebie, Jon Hamm. A one-night Hamm stand will salvage the chipper cheerleader's happily-ever-after with her sweet but stupid former quarterback — if she can convince the actor to participate.

Director David Wain has made a sex comedy that's as innocent as a Labrador puppy. For extra cuteness, he's even modeled the structure on "The Wizard of Oz." Gail and Otto skip along Hollywood's Walk of Fame, aided in their quest by a humbled paparazzo (Ken Marino), a quick-talking CAA agent-in-training (Ben Wang) and "Mad Men's" John Slattery playing a scumbag mockery of himself as a has-been pining for the days when he and Hamm were AMC's prize studs. All of Slattery's lines are filthy or pathetic. He's terrific.

Meanwhile, the wickedly witchy villain Ludovica ("White Lotus" breakout Sabrina Impacciatore) is furious that her minions accidentally swapped her luggage with Gail's at LAX. The laziness of the old-fashioned suitcase switcheroo device is part of the movie's charm. Wain and longtime collaborator and co-screenwriter Marino would rather invest their energy cramming in so many jokes that I could quote a dozen punchlines and barely spoil a thing. (I won't.)

My usual problem with capers is they almost always climax with a tedious chase sequence. Thankfully, Wain undermines the formula, simply snatching clever ideas as they flit past. One of my favorite throwaway giggles comes when a goon gives up pursuing Gail after half a block, wheezing "Stop ... running ... I'm ... tired!"

Deutch is perfect casting for plucky Gail, who commits to bagging Hamm with such gumption that she jumps on a hotel mattress like a little kid. She's so pure of heart that you're not sure she'll know what to do in the bedroom if she actually finds him. Since Deutch's first lead role in the undervalued 2014 "Twilight" piggybacker "Vampire Academy," her screen presence has been 15-going-on-45: a dimpled ingenue with the confident patter of a Preston Sturges heroine. I've liked her in everything but her anachronistic appeal is especially good in movies like "Gail Daughtry" that crank reality up a notch so everything moves fast and silly.

The "Oz" allusions get contradictory and distracting. Loyal Otto — rearrange the letters in his name — has a Tin Man-esque steel plate in his head; Marino and Slattery both share the Cowardly Lion's temper. Apparently, Los Angeles boasts two Emerald Cities: CAA and the Chateau Marmont. The former is heralded with a blast of horns; the latter guards its inner sanctum behind Tobie Windham's officious sentry. Like David Lynch's "Wild at Heart," the plotting doesn't hew so closely to the Yellow Brick Road that its beats feel inevitable. Still, I appreciated how cinematographer Kevin Atkinson alludes to the dusty Kansas prairie with a shot of a beige strip mall.

The tourism board should study how Wain sells a tacky California vacation. Hollywood Boulevard hasn't looked this fetchingly sleazy since "Pretty Woman." Actual tourists even get their own close-ups in a sequence where a henchman (Joe Lo Truglio) waves a photograph of Deutch outside the Chinese Theatre asking people to help him find her. (They can't, but one recognizes Lo Truglio from "Brooklyn Nine-Nine.")

We fall back in love with the city through Gail and Otto's excitement. "Universal CityWalk, Bubba Gump Shrimp, w oooo!" Otto hoots. From musty star maps to ratty psychics, the movie so adores Los Angeles that Thomas Lennon's hair stylist character is a riff on local billboard king Chaz Dean. That gag that won't translate beyond a handful of ZIP Codes. So be it.

Wain makes shooting on location seem obvious. Why build Ludovica's favorite red sauce joint when Colombo's Italian Steakhouse is right there in Eagle Rock? As a bonus, filming in Los Angeles makes it easier for Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Penn Jillette and the actual Aniston to pop by for a scene. Rudd and Banks could have shot their 20-second cameos as a pit stop on a grocery run, a brief thank-you to Wain for launching their comedy careers in 2001's "Wet Hot American Summer." There is no place like home.

Today's cast-dependent indie financing model makes it harder for filmmakers to introduce us to fresh faces. Here, Wain manages to squeeze in a couple of rising talents: Gutierrez-Riley's steady, supportive Otto and Wang's scene-stealing motormouth, a lighter take on the anxious braggart he played in last fall's "The Long Walk." Cassidy, the actor playing Gail's immature fiancé, has been kicking around the business for ages, but finds a funny new gear as a square who is genuinely surprised his girlfriend is upset he slept with a star of "Friends."

Unlike Dorothy, Gail's lust for life proves too big for her small town. But "Gail Daughtry" is less about sex and personal empowerment than the cult of celebrity. Here, every level of notoriety comes with its own awkward perils: Henry Winkler is mistaken for John Travolta, Elizabeth Perkins is spotted driving a taxi, and Slattery tries to curry favor with a desk clerk who recognizes him from "Mad Men" but doesn't care.

The film stops several yellow bricks short of erecting a temple to the sacrifices of fame. Yet you hear a kernel of truth when Gail and the gang break into the mansion of "Weird Al" Yankovic, who yells, "You people think just because you bought a ticket to one of my concerts that you have the right to invade my sanctuary?" No. But buying a ticket to laugh at this satire is the right call.

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'GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS'

MPA rating: R (for sexual content, violence/bloody images and language)

Running time: 1:34

How to watch: In theaters July 10

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