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In 2014, David Wain<\/a> introduced a new cinematic technique that was arguably the biggest contribution to the art of moving images since the advent of Technicolor. With the release of his New York-set rom-com \u201cThey Came Together,\u201d<\/a> he proved that a city doesn\u2019t just have to serve as a film<\/a>\u2019s setting \u2014 it can actually be a character in the movie. Breaking down such a layered metaphysical concept with the relatively few words left in this review would be a fool\u2019s errand, but suffice it to say that all of the math miraculously checks out. <\/p>\n Wain has spent the subsequent decade coasting off the success of that breakthrough, but it\u2019s hard to blame him \u2014 nobody can be expected to stumble upon that level of innovation twice in a lifetime. But his latest masterpiece, \u201cGail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass<\/a>,\u201d proves that his cinematic gambit applies to more than just the Big Apple. The conceptual genius has found a way to turn Los Angeles into a movie character too!\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGail Daughtry\u201d is a love letter to Los Angeles, just without any of the city\u2019s good parts. It\u2019s a tribute to chain restaurants and star maps and grifters who ply Old Hollywood jargon at the unsuspecting tourists who don\u2019t realize they\u2019re missing all the great culture that the city currently has to offer by pursuing what they erroneously believe it once had. It\u2019s all shown through the eyes of Gail (Zoey Deutsch), a clueless midwesterner who shows up in the City of Angels for a hairstyling convention only to find herself questioning everything she once took for granted after a few chance encounters with a CAA assistant, a disgraced paparazzo, and a former \u201cMad Men\u201d star with a lot of time on his hands.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s getting ahead of ourselves. When we meet Gail, she\u2019s perfectly content with her small Kansas life. She\u2019s very excited about marrying her fianc\u00e9 in two weeks, so when the topic of a celebrity \u201chall pass\u201d comes up, she doesn\u2019t even know how to answer the question. Her fianc\u00e9 is quick to reveal that he would use his sex pass on Tilda Swinton (before changing his answer to Jennifer Aniston), but she can\u2019t even come up with a single celebrity fantasy when she\u2019s pressured about it. It\u2019s he who has to remind her that she once masturbated to Jon Hamm when she was 16 years old, so she reluctantly decides to use Don Draper as her pass \u2014 still assuming that this is just a harmless thought exercise.<\/p>\n But when her fianc\u00e9 does fuck the real Jennifer Aniston \u2014 after meeting her in a hilarious context that will remain unspoiled here \u2014 Gail\u2019s life is thrust into crisis. With less than two weeks before she\u2019s set to be married, she accompanies her gay best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to L.A. for a weekend to take her mind off things. Naturally, they determine that the only way to avenge the injustice is for her to have sex with Jon Hamm to even the score. The two clueless tourists embark on a mission to find him that blatantly mirrors \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d picking up a coterie of misfits along the way who help them out of the kindness of their hearts (and the occasional ulterior motive).<\/p>\n The film overflows with celebrity cameos of both the explainable and absurd variety, but it\u2019s all in service of a greater vision. From a Second Amendment-loving Weird Al Yankovic to yet another \u201cShark Tank\u201d investor trying their hand at big screen acting, \u201cGail Daughtry\u201d is a film that\u2019s best watched with a face sheet. All of them are funny, but nobody tops John Slattery, who gives a hysterically self-deprecating performance as a fictional version of his post-\u201cMad Men\u201d self. Unemployed and brimming with confidence that crumbles at the slightest provocation, the self-proclaimed \u201cSlat Man\u201d is desperate to get back into Hamm\u2019s good graces. He sells Gail on his proximity to his former co-star, only for her to find out that their current relationship consists of little more than unanswered text messages. He becomes one more addition to their traveling party, and he remains the straw that stirs the drink for the remainder of the film. <\/p>\n The plot takes quite a few wild digressions on our heroes\u2019 way to meeting Hamm (who also gives an excellent performance as himself). But anyone familiar with Wain and Marino\u2019s work should know that all of this plot summary is worth little more than the digital paper that it\u2019s not actually printed on. Much like \u201cWet Hot American Summer\u201d and \u201cThey Came Together,\u201d \u201cGail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass\u201d is best understood as a basket of jokes and non sequiturs that simply need some kind of framework to keep things semi-coherent. That\u2019s a compliment, of course, as these are very, very funny jokes. Wain and Marino have turned the dumb punchline into a precise science, alternating between wholesomeness and vulgarity with such mastery that you\u2019ll barely have time to catch your breath before you\u2019re ready to start laughing again. <\/p>\n The old cliche that writing about a great film is like dancing about architecture has some truth to it, and this writer is well aware that nothing he could put down into words will be as funny as watching the damn thing. But 25 years after \u201cWet Hot American Summer\u201d premiered at Sundance, it\u2019s a relief to know that Wain and Marino are still at the absolute top of their game. Here\u2019s hoping we get 25 more years of movies from them \u2014\u00a0by then, the world might be ready for \u201cGail Daughtry: Ten Years Later.\u201d<\/p>\n Grade: A-<\/p>\n \u201cGail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass\u201d premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.<\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film reviews<\/a><\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts? Subscribe here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2014, David Wain introduced a new cinematic technique that was arguably the biggest contribution to the art…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":544375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[239550,171,1020,239793,53,11853,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-544374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-david-wain","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-gail-daughtry-and-the-celebrity-sex-pass","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-reviews","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115962194776556888","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Salman](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Knife_The_Attempted_Murder_of_Salman_Rushdie-Still_2.jpg\")
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