If you go into this film expecting a breezy rom-com, you may be surprised at its particularly zany comedy elements. That’s because the film is actually a bit of a reunion project for members of the comedy troupe The State, most famous theatrically for Wet Hot American Summer, including director/co-writer David Wain and co-stars Ken Marino, Joe Lo Truglio, Michael Ian Black, and Thomas Lennon. Even Summer alums Elizabeth Banks and Paul Rudd drop by for brief cameos.
Buy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass from Movie ZyngThe story starts off along expected lines, with Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) distraught when her fiancé gets the opportunity to act on his celebrity sex pass, hooking up with Jennifer Aniston after a book signing (Aniston does make an appearance). This sets Gail on a mission to even the score by dragging her gay best friend Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) along on a trip to Hollywood to track down her pass, Jon Hamm. Along the way, she accidentally swaps bags with a pair of goombahs (Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel) who work for a deadly crime boss (Sabrina Impacciatore) and are determined to correct the mistake.
As the story progresses and gets more and more ridiculous, it slowly resolves into a retelling of The Wizard of Oz, with Gail/Dorothy picking up an assortment of outcasts on her quest, including a disgraced paparazzo (Marino) with a dream of becoming a screenwriter, a down-on-his-luck actor (John Slattery, playing himself) looking for a big comeback, and a fired young talent agent (Ben Wang) hoping to get rehired at CAA. Their eventual meeting with Jon Hamm/the Wizard leads to their discovery that he may not be as all-powerful as they hoped, but still might have enough magic touch to fulfill their dreams. He even has a hot air balloon at the end.
As proclaimed in the cover blurb, the film is delightfully ludicrous, and I had a great time with it. It definitely helps to be an existing fan of The State TV series and/or Wet Hot American Summer to appreciate their particular brand of humor and deep roster of actors, but Deutch rom-com fans stumbling into this shouldn’t be too disappointed since the central plot is satisfyingly resolved. There are times that the story roams into the absurd, especially when Gail beats the mob boss to death with her bare hands, but Deutch’s innate likeability and the gung-ho cast smooth over the rough spots to consistently right the ship before it drifts too far astray.
The Blu-ray presents the film in 2.39:1 aspect ratio, with 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio sound. No bonus features are included.
Buy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass from AmazonShockingly, this film somehow ended up at the usually stuffy and reserved Sony Pictures Classics, which gave me perhaps the biggest laugh of all, but it does have all of the requisite elements to become a “classic,” albeit a decidedly cult one.
