Tribeca Review: “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass”

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (David Wain, 2026) 3 out of 5 stars

An immensely silly film that deserves full kudos for effort, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is both beneficiary and victim of its almost overwhelming zest for fun. Starring Zoey Deutch (Nouvelle Vague) in the title role and a very game supporting cast—including Jennifer Aniston (Dumplin’), Jon Hamm (Maggie Moore(s)), and John Slattery (Nuremberg) as heightened versions of themselves—the movie rushes from one joke to the next in a manner that recalls the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker Airplane and Naked Gun films of yore. When the laughs hit, they’re big. When they miss, the distress is brief. And then we move on to the next bit.

Gail Daughtry is a young woman in Willowbrook, Kansas, who is about to get married to her high-school sweetheart. She works in the local hair salon and has never left the state. When Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Smile 2), her colleague and bestie, asks her to say who her “celebrity sex pass” would be (as in, what famous person would you want your partner to allow you to sleep with one time, no questions asked), she answers “Tom.” That’s her fiancé, who was the town’s star quarterback back in the day.

Tom (Michael Cassidy, Army of the Dead), for his part, returns the compliment, though when they each press the other with a “no, really,” Gail admits that Jon Hamm would do it for her, and Tom claims Tilda Swinton. That evening, however, when Jennifer Aniston shows up for a (hilarious) reading and signing of her new cookbook, Tom switches to her, since she’s so charming. One thing leads to another, and let’s just say that before long, Gail is on her way with Otto to Los Angeles to find Jon Hamm.

Once in town, they run afoul of an Italian mobster played to the over-the-top hilt by Sabrina Impacciatore (Across the River and Into the Trees), courtesy of a luggage mix-up at the airport. As Gail and Otto run around Hollywood and environs looking for Hamm, mafia minions follow close behind. Well, sort of. The hoods are not the most competent of men.

Before long, our duo has picked up something of an entourage. There’s Caleb (Ben Wang (Disney+’s American Born Chinese), a would-be talent agent; Vincent (Ken Marino, Susie Searches), a has-been paparazzo; and John Slattery, in this version of himself a now-out-of-work actor who texts Hamm without answer. It’s a ragtag crew, for sure, though even fools can stumble into success, sometimes.

Throughout it all, Gail never loses her sweet innocence, even as she discusses doing the deed with Hamm. She’s a girl next door without much of a clue who smiles through the best and worst attempts at comedy that Wain and his co-writer (Marino) throw at her. The film’s narrator, Willowbrook’s mailman, Frank (Fred Melamed, Easy’s Waltz), outdoes her in the wince factor, yet both also charm when given the better material. And that’s how it all goes: funny and painful, yet more the former than the latter.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.