David Wain's ironic comedy wanes in Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass

The wet hot American filmmaker returns with another spoof, looser and drier than ever.

By Jacob Oller | July 9, 2026 | 1:00pm

Photo: Sony Pictures Classics

Film Reviews David Wain

David Wain's ironic comedy wanes in Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass

Just as punks need pop to spit at, deadpan send-ups need clear antagonists to riff on, no matter how much affection quietly fuels the takedowns. For director David Wain, those targets can be as goofily specific as the cheap, shaggy, summer camp films that seduced early ’80s channel-flippers with the promise of late-night titillation, or as ambitiously broad as the architecture of the romantic comedy genre. Without such clear inspirations, Wain’s State–and-Stella sense of humor goes from dry to arid—from making us laugh at the sheer lack of punchline oases in the desert to desperately wishing for rescue. Less of a direct spoof than either Wet Hot American Summer or They Came Together, Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass gestures at larger Hollywood mythos, but its humor gets lost along the way—even though it’s equipped with a map to the stars.

Gail Daughtry, which Wain co-wrote with fellow Statesman Ken Marino, superficially blends stereotypical “ingénue going to Los Angeles” plots with the similarly starry-eyed Wizard Of Oz. Except, of course, in Wain’s version, Dorothy is trying to fuck the wizard. Beyond the names (Gail is pals with Otto rather than Toto), the skipping, and the exiting of Kansas, Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass is as loose a riff as Wain’s ever made, bordering on slapdash. That wouldn’t matter if the jokes were consistently funny, the escapades of goofball goodie-goodie Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) overcoming her meandering quest to find, then sleep with, Jon Hamm. But after an enjoyable early undermining of small-town niceties—where Gail’s milquetoast Midwestern high-school-sweetheart-turned-fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) makes immediate use of his celebrity sex pass after a playful conversation between the couple—the ensuing revenge/self-actualization plot barely hangs together enough to get to the next smattering of half-hearted L.A. insider gags.

As Gail and her hairdresser pal Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) assemble their merry ensemble of entertainment industry bottom-feeders—junior CAA agent Caleb (Ben Wang), paparazzo Vincent (Marino, good as ever), and alleged Jon Hamm whisperer John Slattery, playing a washed-up version of himself—it’s hard not to think about recent satires like BoJack Horseman, which was just as likely to get a laugh from an intentionally unfunny “Holly-weird” line while having much more to offer than mere irony. But apart from a few absurd running bits, like a couple cameo players being stalwart “stand your ground” enthusiasts, familiar to all Wain productions, Gail Daughtry leans hard on simple anti-comedic observations, wooden one-liners, and the principle that a bad joke is just a good joke that hasn’t been told enough. Stilted silliness can only go so far, especially when the film moves with the speed of an L.A. gridlock. The city isn’t even a character!

Add in that part of Gail Daughtry‘s schtick is looking like a harmless Nickelodeon Original Movie, punctuated with random bursts of morbidity or violence or F-bombs, and it’s easy for your attention to slide right off of the unassuming images, even if you’re a convert of the filmmaker’s earlier cult material. To that latter point, though, there are plenty of cameos from friends and frequent collaborators like Michael Ian Black, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Rudd, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, and Richard Kind, with Fred Melamed having the funniest bit of the bunch as an increasingly fed-up narrator. And Deutch, as the smiley straight-faced lead, is right in her sweet spot as an unflappable ray of obnoxious sunshine. But this sprawling ensemble, like the other unfocused elements of the film, bogs Gail Daughtry down. A moment or two spent with “Weird Al” or Jennifer Aniston is great. A tedious gangster subplot featuring Sabrina Impacciatore (playing the Wicked Witch role, if you squint?) and a long-telegraphed appearance by Hamm let the air out of film long before the literal hot air balloon appears in the finale.

That kind of deflation works wonders on the Wain crowd most of the time—underplaying an expected comic moment is a specialty that’s won him a loyal following of eye-rollers. But those well-calculated sneers reassure the audience that they’re all punching up at the same ridiculous opponent, that they’re all part of an informed, dumb-on-purpose crowd sharing a common corner of the culture. Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass, silly as it is, doesn’t have this guiding force behind it, because it can’t quite decide what it’s aiming at. It still might make you laugh if you’ve shown one of his other movies to unsuspecting friends as a litmus test, but it’ll also leave you thinking there’s no place like home (or summer camp).

Director: David Wain
Writer: David Wain, Ken Marino
Starring: Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Ben Wang, Sabrina Impacciatore, Jon Hamm
Release Date: July 10, 2026

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