“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” Asks How Far You’d Go to Bang Jon Hamm
L. Frank Baum’s story of a little girl from Kansas finding herself in a land beyond her wildest imagination has had a life far larger than he could have imagined. Since The Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, Dorothy has taken shape in a multitude of different ways. Faithful musicals, speculative musicals, movies, plays, toys, and an allegorical backdrop for a young woman’s quest to have sex with Jon Hamm. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass comes from the minds behind Wet Hot American Summer, David Wain and Ken Marino. It’s a journey of self-discovery smothered in charmingly weird humor and guided by a yellow brick road.
Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) has never left her small Kansas town and has lived a life one might expect, given that information. She was a high school cheerleader and dated the star quarterback, Tom (Michael Cassidy). As an adult, she’s still peppy and now engaged to said star quarterback, who has not moved past the glory of his high school years. Gail and Tom jokingly discuss who their Celebrity Hall Pass would be. By freak chance, Tom has an opportunity to make good on the hall pass and he does. Gail is distraught and heartbroken, but decides that the answer to her pre-marriage woes is to fly to Los Angeles and have sex with Jon Hamm.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Summer 2026 is the season of Zoey Deutch. From the heartbreakingly sweet throwback rom com of Voicemails for Isabelle to her voice work on Minions & Monsters and now Gail Daughtry, Deutch is working overtime. Her quick comedy instincts are on display in all these films, but there is perhaps no better vehicle to showcase her skills than the writing of Marino and Wain. There’s a distinct style they’ve been honing together for over thirty years. It’s nice to see them pass the torch to a younger generation with Deutch and her costars, Ben Wang and Miles Gutierrez-Riley. This is the first time the Wet Hot gang has written a film for younger actors in a manner that matches what they started out writing for themselves. Deutch is the same age as Wain was when Wet Hot American Summer was released, and she seems like a voice we’ll be hearing a lot from over the next thirty years.
Each of the characters of Gail Daughtry has their Wizard of Oz counterpoint. Gail is Dorothy Gale, the plucky believer who collects a troop of ragtag weirdos to achieve her goal. Jon Hamm is the Wizard. The leader of the criminal enterprise that’s chasing Gail across the city is the Wicked Witch, complete with her flying-monkey henchmen. Gail has her Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion in Caleb (Wang), Otto (Gutierrez-Riley), and John Slattery as himself. Along the way, Gail and her friends come across a series of real-life celebrity cameos. Many of Wain’s frequent collaborators make an appearance, but a personal favorite is “Weird Al” Yankovic wielding a machine gun from a golf cart.
There is no brow too low, no joke too stupid for this crew of characters. Like most comedies, it’ll be obvious from the first few minutes whether Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass will tickle your funny bone. It’s a movie that, even if it wasn’t made by the same guys, would bring Wet Hot American Summer to mind by its classic approach to comedy. The premise is simple, the journey winding, and the jokes pile up by the minute. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is silly, good fun, something we need a lot more of.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, TikTok, YouTube, & Facebook. Check out Movies with My Dad, a podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies and I Think You’ll Hate This, a podcast hosted by two friends who rarely agree.
support your local film critic!
~
support your local film critic! ~
Beyond the Cinerama Dome is run by one perpetually tired film critic
and her anxious emotional support chihuahua named Frankie.
Your kind donation means Frankie doesn’t need to get a job…yet.