It’s the kind of thing that people always talk about but never expect to happen: allowing a partner to have sex with a celebrity without it being considered cheating. While actualizations are indeed quite rare, presuming that such a union can happen without any feelings of jealousy or resentment is irresponsible and delusional at best. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass introduces that concept and demonstrates almost immediately how it leads to problems and, in this case, wild hijinks beyond its plucky protagonist’s craziest dreams.
Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) is about to marry her longtime boyfriend (Michael Cassidy). When they attend a local book signing by Jennifer Aniston, Gail encourages him to change his celebrity sex pass – previously Tilda Swinton – to her, unaware that he’ll end up sleeping with her minutes later when he goes back into the bookstore looking for his jacket. Upset, Gail decides to accompany her best friend and fellow hairdresser Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to New York for a work event but also so that she can even the score by sleeping with her celebrity sex pass: Jon Hamm. Finding him proves trickier than they initially thought, and they soon enlist a ragtag band of friends to aid them in their quest: a low-level CAA employee (Ben Wang), a paparazzo (Ken Marino), and Hamm’s former Mad Men costar John Slattery.
Wain was last at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 with A Futile and Stupid Gesture, and premiered what may be his best-known film, Wet Hot American Summer, at the festival back in 2001. His co-screenwriter for this project is Marino, and the ensemble includes some of their regular players like Joe Lo Truglio, Mather Zickel, and Kerri Kenney-Silver. Like their past films, the emphasis here is not on serious storytelling or even smart comedy, but rather the playing out of a progressively more absurd scenario prone to slapstick moments and an embracing of the preposterous. Wain fans know what they’re in for, and audiences new to his work should also find themselves very amused, provided they don’t mind throwing logic out the window at every possible turn.
This film opens in Kansas with Fred Melamed playing a mailman who also serves as the narrator, a device that’s used only briefly but does provide a humorous entryway into the film’s content. This is definitely a parody of Hollywood, with Gail and Otto arriving to their startlingly luxurious hotel and being recommended two incredible attractions on Hollywood Boulevard: McDonald’s and Starbucks. If the film’s tone wasn’t clear enough from its start, it’s very much established then, along with a maniacal villain (Sabrina Impacciatore) dispatching two henchmen (Truglio and Zickel) to find Gail after she ends up with a briefcase with mysterious evil materials in it instead of all her hair tools and products, all because the henchmen stopped to take a photo with Henry Winkler at the airport.
This film’s title should be enough of an indication of how over-the-top it is, thought it does dive more fully into that as it progresses. Deutch is more than up for the task of playing a sweet small-town girl who’s never been out of Kansas and has a sincere innocence to her yet still talks very freely about having sex with Jon Hamm. There’s a glaring irreverence to this film which may catch audiences off-guard, but that’s part of what makes it so funny. It’s entertaining to see Slattery mock himself as an out-of-work actor who can’t even get Hamm to text him back, especially since the real Slattery has actually been relatively busy recently with scenery-chewing, mustache-twirling drama roles. Tobie Windham is the film’s best surprise as Hamm’s bodyguard, and he and Melamed make the most of their lines with the perfect punch-up deadpan delivery. As it veers into absurdity, this film may induce a few eye rolls that will be just as quickly followed up by laughter due to its sheer commitment to the joke and its wacky premise.
Movie Rating: 7/10
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass premieres in the Premieres section at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
