Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass Review: A Wholesome Sex Comedy That Doesn’t Quite Click

Zoey Deutch was robbed. In another cinematic era, this fizzy fast talker would have been a screwball comedy star. Instead, she’s had the bad fortune of being born in an age of middling Hollywood comedies, mostly underachievers and straight-to-streamers. 

That the genially doofy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is even getting a theatrical release is something of a surprise. It certainly looks like a straight-to-streamer, all shiny and depthless, though that chintzy sheen could be explained as reflecting the lightly askew world it inhabits, wherein a small-town Kansas boy can stumble into a strip-mall quickie with Jennifer Aniston. The indiscretion spurs his fiancée Gail (Deutch, Nouvelle Vague) to journey to Hollywood in search of Jon Hamm, with a plan to cash in her own celebrity sex pass and restore the equilibrium in their relationship. 

Hamm and Aniston aren’t the only celebs embracing a bizarro version of themselves here. There’s also Hamm’s Mad Men pal John Slattery, playing a sad sack version of himself recruited by Gail to get her closer to Hamm, plus cameos from Henry Winkler, Elizabeth Perkins, Penn Jillette, and Weird Al, which says something about the film’s target demo. No shade: I’m an old, too, and I knee-jerk smirked every time one of director/co-writer David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models) and co-writer/co-star Ken Marino’s colleagues from The State popped up in a bit part. Still, razor-sharp comedy it doesn’t make, and you won’t find it either in an uninspired mob subplot that injects jolts of cartoonish violence.

You can sense an enormous amount of goodwill powering this thing (Deutch’s sunshine smile is the backup generator), and despite the plot centering around the quest of “slipping Hamm’s D into Gail’s V” there’s something genuinely wholesome-feeling about the whole endeavor. Gail is a sweetheart, her best friend bond with fellow hairdresser Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) is a model of supportive friendship, and, in the film’s Wizard of Oz-like plotting, Gail brings out the best in the randos she picks up along the way. (The film hammers home the Oz comparison with Gail’s snazzy ruby-red loafers; costume designer Bryn Carter’s wardrobe work is all around aces.) The heart’s there, no doubt about it. If it only had better laughs.

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This article appears in July 10 • 2026.