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'Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass' review: Unwieldy, but hilarious

Moira Macdonald, The Seattle Times on

Published in Entertainment News

The plot of the wildly uneven but often very funny comedy “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is basically “The Wizard of Oz” but with celebrity sex in it.

Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), whose name is more or less Dorothy Gale backward, is a bright-eyed Kansas hairdresser delighted to soon be marrying her true love, Tom (Michael Cassidy). The two have joked about who their “celebrity sex passes” might be — Jennifer Aniston for him, Jon Hamm for her — but to Gail’s dismay the theoretical becomes actual when Aniston drops into town on her cookbook tour (has the “Friends” star fallen on hard times?) and gets way too friendly in a bookstore backroom with Tom. Crushed but determined, Gail heads to Los Angeles to seek out Hamm and even the score, acquiring a group of unexpected and thoroughly inept friends along the way.

Directed by David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer,” “Role Models”), “Gail Daughtry” is the sort of cheerfully clueless raunchy summer comedy that’s full of gags and entire subplots that don’t entirely work, but nonetheless you’re won over despite yourself — perhaps because it’s impossible to dislike a movie that has cameos from Paul Rudd, Penn Jillette, Henry Winkler, Elizabeth Banks and Weird Al Yankovic. Deutch, whose Gail is so relentlessly cute she could teach lessons to puppies, beams her way through her one-note role, an approach which makes earnest lines like “Do you think celebrities normally let in strangers with sex requests?” all the funnier. And the “Wizard of Oz” parallels are fun to spot, particularly in a final scene at the wedding that makes up for every flat laugh line before it.

But what makes “Gail Daughtry” work as much as it does are the celebrities at its center, all of whom are very good at making fun of themselves. Aniston reading aloud a recipe from her cookbook (it’s called, perfectly, “Straightforward Suppers”) is a highlight, as is her chipper, “Oh please, call me Jen!” to Gail upon being discovered with Tom. John Slattery, who joins Gail’s crew as someone who can theoretically get them to Hamm (“We’re still friends! We text!” he insists, quite unconvincingly), has a funny desperation to him. Hamm, who proved long ago in “30 Rock” that he’s the smoothest of comedians, makes a perfect silver-fox Holy Grail.

“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is as unwieldy as its title, but it definitely brings laughter — and that, in any season, is a gift.

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'GAIL DAUGHTRY AND THE CELEBRITY SEX PASS'

 

2.5 stars (out of 4)

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

Running time: 1:33

How to watch: In theaters July 10

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© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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