The enduring appeal of comedian and filmmaker David Wain lies in his ability to channel the feeling of hanging around the most naturally funny friend in any group. He’s the kind of person whose sense of humor is always on and looking for the next opportunity to land a joke. The difference, of course, is that he can pull from a deep bench of high-profile friends like Elizabeth Banks and Paul Rudd to show up and help sell the vision.
Wain, alongside frequent collaborators like Ken Marino, can start with the nugget of a comedic concept and continuously riff on it long enough to develop into a story. His latest feature, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” amounts to an endless iteration of a big idea. With Marino in tow as co-writer, the film unfolds like a live spitballing session. It’s a bit like watching them assemble the first draft of a project as they think through what would happen if one member of a couple actually followed through on sleeping with their celebrity crush.
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That’s the scenario facing Zoey Deutch’s titular character in the film. This simple and sweet Kansas girl improbably catches her fiancé in the act with Jennifer Aniston after he confesses that the “Friends” star would be his celebrity sex pass. Gail decides the only natural response is to rebalance the scales and fulfill her own fantasy fling.
The film maintains a shaggy quality as she flies out to Los Angeles in search of Jon Hamm, befitting both Wain’s own style and Gail’s own impromptu journey. She starts with just her hairdressing colleague Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley), whose trip to LA for a conference provides a convenient pretext for Gail to get out of town. Yet gradually, she begins to accumulate a horde of helpers to track down the “Mad Men” headliner, including an eager talent agency assistant (Ben Wang), a desperate paparazzo (Marino), and one of Hamm’s own co-stars from the show (John Slattery as himself).
If the setting and the setup sound vaguely like “The Wizard of Oz,” that’s no accident. Wain and Marino’s logline quickly gloms onto a well-known narrative structure, giving it enough legs to sustain a 90-minute runtime. Having the framework helps corral Wain and Marino’s inexhaustible comic energy and keeps it from sputtering off the rails entirely. Otherwise, the concept could collapse under the sheer volume of bits, gags, and one-liners the creators throw out.
Their hit rate in “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is quite spotty throughout. Despite the film’s construction feeling borderline stream-of-consciousness, this is not simply an idea running out of steam or overstaying its welcome. From beginning to end, some jokes land, and others fail to connect. Many of them whiff because they seem hastily considered and off-the-cuff.
The quality control distribution is fairly even, too, which keeps the film teetering on the edge of both redemption and oblivion. But all it takes is one genuinely inspired choice, like a bizarre cutaway to vintage ‘70s-era traffic B-roll during Gail’s taxi into Los Angeles or an extended physical gag involving a slamming door on Slattery’s foot, to reconfirm that few people commit to the bit as Wain does. He’s so unafraid of being caught looking stupid that he’s willing to push a bit past the point of cringe and into something sublime.
Wain and Marino’s saving grace is just how many shots on goal they take with the comedy. When something bombs, they move on to their next setup so quickly that there’s not a moment for the cloud of dust to settle. However, the hasty construction of the project confines “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” to just two modes of humor: deliriously, delightfully dumb and niche film industry/Los Angeles references. (If a sight gag about the CAA “Death Star” is something you’d understand, this film will tickle your fancy like nothing else.)
This limited range keeps the film from successfully accessing other key registers that define the best of Wain’s work. “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is too unfocused to tap into the absurdism of “Wet Hot American Summer” or the character-driven comedy of “Role Models.” Without these more sophisticated shadings, the entertainingly dumb often plays as just plain dumb.
Zoey Deutch helps paper over some of the film’s deficiencies through her predictably peppy performance. She’s always a bright ball of sunshine on-screen, but “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” far too often relies on her to generate the energy to power the film forward. But Wain and Marino do no favors for Deutsch and the other actors by giving them such paper-thin character sketches with which to work. Far too often, Gail and her posse function as little more than delivery mechanisms for the script’s laugh lines.
Even the most hair-brained of Wain’s films have some quality elements, and “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is certainly no exception to that rule. But it’s nevertheless a slight disappointment to see a luminary operating at the lower end of his power and promise. [C+]
