The crazy joy of “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is about a lovers’ bluff that comes true. Midwestern childhood sweethearts Gail (Zoey Deutch) and Tom (Michael Cassidy) are two weeks away from their wedding when the besotted groom-to-be sleeps with Jennifer Aniston, the only star he’s jokingly allowed to fuck. To even the score, Gail and her best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) fly from Kansas to Los Angeles to seduce their famous freeloader Jon Hamm. A one-night stand with Hamm could save the bubbly cheerleader’s happy life with her sweet but goofy ex-protector – if she can convince the actor to take part.
Director David Wain has created a sexy comedy as innocent as a Labrador puppy. He even modeled the structure after The Wizard of Oz for added appeal. Gail and Otto gallop down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, aided in their quest by a meek paparazzo (Ken Marino), a fast-talking trainee CAA agent (Ben Wang), and Mad Men’s John Slattery, playing a self-mocking creep who yearns for the days when he and Hamm were AMC prize players. All of Slattery’s lines are dirty and pathetic. He’s amazing.
Meanwhile, the evil witch villain Ludovica (White Lotus, Sabrina Impacciatore) is furious that her minions accidentally swapped her luggage with Gail’s at LAX. The laziness of the old-fashioned suitcase switch is part of the film’s charm. Wayne and longtime co-writer and co-writer Marino would rather pour their energy into so many jokes that I could quote a dozen punchlines and spoil almost nothing. (I won’t.)
My usual problem with capers is that they almost always end in a tedious chase scene. Thankfully, Wayne subverts the formula by simply catching clever ideas as they fly by. One of my favorite laughs comes when the thug stops chasing Gail half a block away and croaks, “Stop…running…I’m…tired!”
Deutch is perfect for the plucky Gail, who decides to stuff Hamm with such gumption that she jumps onto a hotel mattress like a small child. She’s so pure of heart that you’re not sure she’d know what to do in the bedroom if she actually found him. Since Deutch’s first starring role in 2014’s underrated Twilight film Vampire Academy, her screen presence has been the same as it was from 15 to 45: a dimpled, confidently spoken ingénue for Preston Sturges’s heroine. I liked her in everything, but her anachronistic appeal is especially good in films like Gail Daughtry, which take the reality up a notch so that everything happens fast and stupid.
The “Oz” allusions become contradictory and distracting. Loyal Otto—rearrange the letters in his name—has a Tin Man-style steel plate in his head; Marino and Slattery share the character of the Cowardly Lion. Apparently, Los Angeles boasts two Emerald Cities: CAA and Chateau Marmont. The first is announced by the sound of a horn; the latter guards his inner sanctum behind Toby Wyndham’s annoying sentinel. Like David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, the plot isn’t so close to Yellow Brick Road that its beats feel inescapable. However, I liked the way cinematographer Kevin Atkinson hints at the dusty Kansas prairie in the shot of a beige shopping mall.
The tourism board should look into how Wayne is selling tacky California vacations. Hollywood Boulevard hasn’t looked so charmingly scruffy since Pretty Woman. Real tourists even get their own close-ups in a sequence where a henchman (Joe Lo Truglio) waves a photo of Deutch outside the Chinese Theater and asks people to help him find her. (They can’t, but you might recognize Lo Truglio from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.)
We fall in love with the city all over again thanks to Gail and Otto’s excitement. “Universal CityWalk, Bubba Gump Shrimp, woooh!” Otto screams. From musty star maps to rat psychics, the film is so adoring of Los Angeles that Thomas Lennon’s character, a hair stylist, is a riff on local billboard king Chaz Dean. It’s a joke that can’t be translated beyond a few zip codes. So be it.
Wayne makes shooting on location obvious. Why build Louis’s favorite red sauce spot when Colombo’s Italian Steakhouse is right in Eagle Rock? As a bonus, filming in Los Angeles facilitates appearances by Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Penn Jillette and Aniston herself. Rudd and Banks could have filmed their 20-second cameos as a pit stop during a grocery run, as a brief thank you to Wayne for launching their comedy careers in 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer. There is there’s no place like home.
Today’s actor-dependent independent funding model makes it difficult for filmmakers to introduce us to new faces. Here, Wayne manages to squeeze in a pair of rising talents: the level-headed, supportive Otto Gutierrez-Riley and the garrulous talker Wang, a lighter version of the angsty blowhard he played in last fall’s The Long Walk. Cassidy, the actor who plays Gail’s immature fiancé, has been in this business for ages, but finds a funny new twist in the form of Square, who is genuinely surprised that his girlfriend is upset that he slept with the “Friends” star.
Unlike Dorothy, Gail’s lust for life proves too great for her small town. But “Gail Daughtry” is less about sex and personal empowerment than it is about the cult of celebrity. Here, every level of fame has its own awkward dangers: Henry Winkler is mistaken for John Travolta, Elizabeth Perkins is spotted driving a taxi, and Slattery tries to ingratiate himself with a clerk who recognizes him from Mad Men but doesn’t care.
The film stops a few yellow bricks from building a temple of sacrifice to glory. And yet you hear a kernel of truth when Gale and his gang break into the mansion of “Weird Al” Yankovic, who shouts, “You think that just because you bought a ticket to one of my concerts, you have the right to invade my hideout?” No. But buying a ticket to laugh at this satire is the right choice.
“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass”
Rating: R is for sexual content, violence/bloody images and strong language.
Opening hours: 1 hour 34 minutes
I play: Opening Friday, July 10th in wide release.