Kansas girl Gail is about to get married, but then her fiancé uses his “Celebrity Sex Pass” to have sex with Jennifer Aniston. In order to even the scales, Gail seeks to bed Jon Hamm. The movie is a broad, random-feeling satire of Hollywood and celebrity culture. It’s made up of a long string of coarse, raunchy, silly gags and one-liners. Most discerning viewers will want to stay very far away.
Gail is a relatively happy young woman living in Willowbrook, Kansas. Her career as a hairstylist is going fairly well. She has good friends—like her gay bestie and fellow stylist, Otto. And she’s engaged to her old high school sweetheart, Tom.
Now, Gail is ready to admit that Tom isn’t perfect. Who is? But their relationship is solid, and the dream of a home and future family has Gail eagerly anticipating the wedding and all that comes after.
However, sometimes conversations and libidos can go astray.
The couple jokingly talks about the silly concept of a “Celebrity Sex Pass” on the way to a bookstore reading. Tom chuckles the concept off … but then ends up in a back room having sex with new cookbook author, Jennifer Aniston. Yes, that Jennifer Aniston.
When Gail walks in on them, she’s left with a golly-gee-whiz of a conundrum: What now?
Gail was the one who brought up the whole silly sex pass thing. She didn’t actually think it was anything but a joke, but here she is. (And, by the way, that Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle is nowhere near as cute as it used to be.)
Now if Gail is going to enjoy her upcoming nuptials, it seems there’s only one thing to do: Gail will have to join Otto at his upcoming hairstylists convention in Los Angeles (featuring celebrity hairstylist Remy Fontaine, don’t cha know), and while she’s there, she’ll have to sleep with her celebrity pass. It’s the only sensible way to balance things out. A sex fling for a sex fling.
Problem is, Gail hasn’t got the slightest idea where to find her crush, Jon Hamm. He could be sitting jauntily—with cigarette in hand and hair coiffed just so—on any couch in the whole of Tinseltown.
And Gail doesn’t even smoke.
Maybe Gail will meet someone (or three someones) who can help guide her down that Hollywood yellow brick road. But it’ll have to be a whirlwind of a trip, for she only has the weekend. And Gail so wanted to see the sights of Los Angeles and whip-curl a bang or two.
(Sigh.) Oh, Otto. There’s no place like L.A.
Interestingly, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass makes the subtle point (almost accidentally) that giving yourself over to your lesser urges doesn’t make you happy—it just leaves you feeling unfulfilled and longing for something more. The movie’s carefree sex flinging is played for giggles, but the emptiness of it all can’t help but seep through.
We see new friends encourage and stand by one another.
Gail and Otto go to a psychic who initially seems like a scam artist but then comes up with some preternatural insights. Otto declares that the psychic’s service is “so worth” the $20 Gail paid.
Among the happy neighbors in Gail’s early-morning neighborhood, one man stands with his robe open and his underwear-clad erection on prominent display. That sets the stage for the running sex gags that spatter the rest of the film.
Otto and others crack a variety of sexual jokes. We hear cracks about sex toys, sex positions, casual sex relationships, masturbation and locations where you can engage in various sexual practices. (Otto avails himself, off-screen, at one such back-alley “pleasure spot” and walks away buckling his pants.)
As far as the onscreen coitus is concerned, we see Tom and Jennifer Aniston in the midst of the act, with nudity blocked by a couch and the camera position. Later on, Gail and her own crush end up in a bed and in a shower for a couple different sessions of heated intercourse. Skin and several faux sex positions are on display, but all key body areas are covered or blocked from the camera’s view.
Gail and Tom kiss. Gail and her newfound friends tramp around in their underwear several times during the course of their journey. Gail displays ample cleavage in a wedding dress. A couple decides to forego any form of commitment and instead keep things “loose and freaky.”
A side-story involves Gail accidentally swapping briefcases with a couple of mob thugs. So, Gail ends up with voluminous files centered around a plan to leave the global financial system in chaos. That translates into several scenes and gags involving brutal thumpings, murder and some splashing blood.
The violence is all played for “laughs,” but we still see people repeatedly punched in the face and kicked in the crotch. Bones break. People get shot in the head and bleed out. A guy takes a nail file to the jugular. An individual’s face is seared by two hot curling irons. Another fellow is nearly drowned in his soup. Someone’s foot gets slammed in a doorjamb ’til bloody. Bullets rip up scenery. A man is hit so hard that his face is separated from his body. A woman gets punched repeatedly and then tackled to the ground; she’s then battered so viciously that her blood spatters and covers her attacker with gore. (The camera watches from the point of view of the victim and doesn’t show the actual wounds.)
On another goofy tack, Weird Al Yankovic plays himself as a rabid gun owner who chases and shoots at people with an automatic weapon. We hear stories about someone’s loved one being disemboweled by a bull and a woman’s parents who died in a double suicide.
The dialogue features more than 20 f-words and a dozen s-words along with multiple uses of “d–n,” “b–ch” and “h—.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused 14 times total (six of those instances combining God’s name with “d–n”).
There are crude references to male and female genitalia.
Jon Hamm smokes. We see a glass of wine on a dinner table.
One character repeatedly vomits on-screen. Someone opines that marriage is all about “picking your poison.”
One thing I can give Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass credit for is writer/director David Wain’s willingness to pull out all the stops and toss all sorts of ridiculous, random-feeling nonsense onto the screen. He doesn’t hold back, hoping that something will make you chuckle.
Wain is probably best known for his teensploitation-satirizing pic, 2001’s Wet Hot American Summer. In Gail Daughtry, he aims his lampooning gaze at Hollywood and our culture’s tendency to idolize celebrities. And Wain uses a winking Wizard of Oz motif to rib-nudgingly drive his point home.
However, that’s all of the creative hat-tip I can give this pic. More than anything, the film is a bucket brigade of goofy, ridiculous gags and one-liners. It’s coarse, foul, sometimes bloody and often raunchy.
Star Zoey Deutch (Gail) sports a Midwestern corn-eating smile throughout. And frankly, that’s about the only consistent smile that discerning viewers can bank on.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
