comedy

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

We’re off to see Jon Hamm. The wonderful Jon Hamm of Hollywood.

If Gail Daughtry is a Kansas girl entering a big city, meets a variety of colorful characters, faces a witch, and wants to meet a very important person, then you know “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is like an R-rated “30 Rock” meets “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” version of “The Wizard of Oz.”

Even when it seems too conventional, it offers some good laughs and fun characters to enjoy. Maybe it could be a Capra-esque film when it wants to delight us in an old fashioned manner and it’s more consistent than how James L. Brooks went for that in “Ella McCay.” And maybe it is a satire.

Zoey Deutch plays Gail, who is a small town hairdresser with a happy life. Gale was Dorothy’s last name, and Gail is this heroine’s first name. Her best friend is her gay co-worker Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), her high school sweetheart is her fiancée Tom (Michael Cassidy), and her celebrity dream crush is Jon Hamm. In fact, she learns about something called a “Celebrity Sex Pass,” in which a person is entitled to have sex with their dream idol when the opportunity is given, and the other person can even the score.

One day at a Jennifer Aniston book signing, Tom tells Gail he left his coat inside, and gullible as she is, she waits by the car up until closing time, asks somebody to let her find her fiancée, and finds out he used his Celebrity Sex Pass on Aniston. Then, she decides to travel with Otto to Los Angeles for a hair expo event, and to find and have sex with Jon Hamm to even the score. From the start, things are so colorful, as their taxi driver is played enthusiastically by Richard Kind, the first celebrity she sees is Henry Winkler, and the hotel gives her and Otto great places to visit (Starbucks and McDonalds being among them). And I guess Otto would be Toto.

On their trek, they meet a variety of colorful characters like a would-be agent named Caleb (Ben Wang), a washed-up paparazzi named Vincent (Ken Marino, who also wrote the script with director David Wain), and even Hamm’s old “Mad Men” co-star John Slattery. So now, they’re off to see Jon Hamm. The wonderful Jon Hamm of Hollywood. And the Wicked Witch of the West Coast is an Italian mobster named Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore), whose brief case gets swapped with Gail’s and orders her flying monkeys (Joe Lo Truglio and Matthew Zickel) to retrieve it.

“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” also has a narrator in the form of a mailman (Fred Melmad), who loves telling Gail’s story even inside a mailbox as if he’s talking to the audience. He offers some nice laughs in this notion, and has more appeal than Julie Kavner had in “Ella McCay.”

At one point, I thought Deutch would be a bad actress with movies like “Vampire Academy” and “Dirty Grandpa,” but the more movies I saw her in (“Everybody Wants Some,” “Nouvelle Vague,” “The Outfit,” “Not Okay,” “Juror No.2 ,” “Voicemails for Isabelle,” and “Minions & Monsters”), the more I realized she can blossom into a fine young actress. And she applies herself in a Tina Fey manner in this movie. And Gutierrez-Riley, Wang, and Marino are also likable in their own aspects, and even Slattery and Hamm lampoon themselves nicely.

Sometimes, it can be a little too silly, but I guess that’s all part of the satire. If “Lynch/Oz” can acknowledge that movies use bits and pieces from “The Wizard of Oz,” then I guess Wain and Marino can make it into a sex comedy of sorts. Now, I don’t even think we’re in Kansas anymore.

Rating: 3 out of 4.

In Select Theaters This Friday

Categories: comedy

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