Tit for Tat: Review of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
★★★☆
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Slapstick, satire, parody, black comedy, the rom-com, and screwball comedies. Everything from Duck Soup to Dr. Strangelove to A Fish Called Wanda to Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail to Bringing up Baby to Young Frankenstein to Idiocracy falls under the umbrella of film comedy, but how is it possible to compare the biting satire of a Jo Jo Rabbit to the insipid silliness of a movie like Dumb and Dumber? Granted, they both make us laugh, but beyond that, their intents could not be any more different.
In defining comedy, the question is not if we laugh (although that is important), it’s how—or why—we laugh. Idiocracy is a hilarious film full of side-splitting sight gags, but which is cringeworthy in its unflinching focus on the aspects of our decline of modern civilization—many of which are present in our own lives. American Fiction and Triangle of Sadness are two other examples of narratives that lampoon race, equity, and power. Part of the reason we laugh is that we recognize the reality of what we see.
So, in short, modern cinematic comedy has something for everyone. We can go from the completely escapist fare like Elf to the harsh humor of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to anywhere in between.
David Wain’s Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is somewhere in the middle. It encompasses the best qualities of the zany screwball comedy while delivering an incisive poke at the Hollywood celebrity culture by incorporating cameos by well-known actors like… well, no spoilers.
The beginning of the film is framed by Frank the Mailman’s introductory remarks from Willowbrook, Kansas, about the life story of Gail Daughtry (Zoe Deutch), a chirpy and irrepressible hairdresser who is engaged to Tom (Michael Cassidy), her high school sweetheart. On their way to a book-signing, Tom mentions their “celebrity sex pass” agreement—that each of them could sleep with a celebrity crush without consequences. Gail is a little surprised, thinking it was all a joke, but then later, when she catches Tom having sex with a celebrity—not even his crush—she is devastated.
Angry at Tom, she takes her hairdresser friend Otto’s (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) advice to travel with him to Los Angeles to attend a hairdresser’s convention. At the airport, Gail mistakenly switches briefcases with hired thug Sergio (Joe Lo Truglio) who works for Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore) a woman who has designs on world domination. Of course, the briefcase contains documents indispensable to her criminal enterprise and she will stop at nothing to get it back.
After a whirlwind tour of Hollywood Boulevard, Gail and Otto go to a fortune teller who advises her to sleep with John Hamm, her own celebrity crush, in order to level the playing field of their relationship.
In their harebrained quest to find the elusive Mr. Hamm, the two meet with Caleb (Ben Wang) an intern at a talent agency, Vincent (Ken Marino—who also penned the screenplay), a has-been paparazzi, and John Slattery who join together in their search for the elusive Mr. Hamm, all the while being tailed by Sergio and his cohorts. Dodging gunfire, assassination attempts, and overly aggressive bodyguards, Gail’s pluckiness and effervescence lead to her heart’s desire.
There is a casual airiness in Gail Daughtry (more than in your usual comedy) that makes it seem as if the story is unfolding spontaneously, but it is in fact a tightly structured narrative designed to produce this effect. The screenplay is meticulously constructed and metered, but a good part of the movie’s effervescence stems from Gail’s overly bubbly and chirpy persona that seems to carry the project along with her. She is happy, friendly, helpful, and enthusiastic (almost to the point of supreme annoyance) as she bounces her way through the film like a St. Bernard puppy, collecting clueless cohorts in her wake.
This unique vibe is also highlighted by the monumental silliness of the heroic group’s antics, like building a clothes ladder to climb a fence they end up pushing someone over anyway or stripping and throwing their clothes to foil pursuers, but it doesn’t really matter how silly they are—it all works. It’s funny, and we’re happy to suspend our disbelief.
The production design reinforces the relaxed and airy vibe. Full of pastels and bright colors and sunshine (of course, it’s Southern California), it adds a freshness and vitality to the film. This sort of positive elan is belied and sometimes flat-out contradicted by the sudden appearance of edgy elements—as when the hotel concierge tells Otto and Gail about special services behind the local Foot Locker.
During the earlier book-signing scene, the fatuousness of celebrity culture is underlined as Jennifer Aniston, as author of her own celebrity cookbook, dramatically reads the ingredients of a recipe to her adoring audience, ending with the grand advice to “serve with two glasses of tap water”. Later, as Gail waits for Tom, she muses through the recipes for pancakes, gushing over the instructions to “add water to the mix”, and her special recipe for bagels and cream cheese.
The presence (and satirization) of the Hollywood celebrity culture is an integral part of this film. In the tradition of Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Jackson, and Stan Lee—and with the conceit that the Kansans have come to Hollywood to hunt celebrities—part of the fun is trying to spot celebrity appearances in the movie. The cameo is a time-honored tradition of comedies, including Bill Murray in Zombieland, Alice Cooper in Wayne’s World, and James Brolin in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, to name only a few.
Probably the most gimmicky use of the star cameo was in the 1963 film The List of Adrian Messenger in which Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, and Robert Mitchum not only appear in cameo roles but are so heavily disguised they are nearly unrecognizable. At the end of the film, they peel off their make-up to reveal their “true” identities.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass conflates this aspect of celebrity-spotting with the celebrity sex pass, a trope which manages to flip Gail’s corn-fed innocence on its head. Not only has this sterling example of Midwest purity been goaded into revenge by her unfaithful fiancé, but her vengeance will be predicated on her own act of unfaithfulness. Her innocent exuberance at meeting a movie star at the airport will eventually morph into a premeditated act of vengeful lust—we’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.
The foundation on which this narrative of this film rests is based on a familiar Hollywood classic, but it—not unlike a walk-through celebrity—is not immediately recognizable; however, visual and verbal Easter eggs appear throughout until the source of this story becomes readily—and hilariously—apparent. In fact, there are some many breadcrumbs thrown along the trail, it is tempting to go back and make sure we have them all.
As Gail, Zoe Deutch tempers the goofy and unsinkable optimism of her character with an earnest intelligence and dogged determination, so we end up liking her almost in spite of her goodness. Her quest to have sex with a celebrity taints her innocence a bit, but since it’s for a good cause, we accept it, and we even applaud her for it.
The supporting cast is just as believably endearing as Gail. Gutierrez-Riley’s Otto and Wang’s Caleb are as funny as they are lovable—kind of like lost puppies. Wang’s timing and his sudden surges of articulateness during his pitches are surprisingly funny. John Slattery and John Hamm are hilarious as they poke fun at their star personas.
In a time when tensions, worries, and stress levels are running high, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a breath of fresh air. Because it is a load of laugh-out-loud fun with a series of self-deprecating jabs at its own celebrity (and the vacuousness of LA culture), this film is a genuine treat.
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