Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass
Sony Pictures Classics
Original Release Date July 10th, 2026
Written by David Wain, Ken Marino
Directed by David Wain
Starring Zoey Deutch, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Ben Wang, Ken Marino, John Slattery
Language English
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by "Doc" Hunter Bush,
MovieJawn Staff Writer & Podcast Director, cohost of the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass comes to Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Classics. Directed by comedy veteran David Wain, the film is in line with Wain's usual genre-savvy, silly, and anarchic output. Sony Pictures Classics' release of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass looks and sounds good, but being a new release, lacks additional content.
The Movie Itself: 4 stars
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a film with a very thin premise. Allegedly, this was part of what drew director David Wain and co-writer Ken Marino to working on it: it's cliché and it doesn't really go anywhere in a grounded universe. So Wain, Marino and their crew set out to create a universe where it could work. One that mostly represents our own, but not in any ways that would inhibit the fun that could be had.
We follow the titular Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), a hairdresser who's about to be married. When her husband-to-be cashes in his titular sex pass, Gail decides to tag along with her coworker and bff Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to Hollywood to find the name on her pass: Jon Hamm! They make friends, inadvertently make enemies, and meet several celebrities on their star-studded silly adventure, while they're off to see the Hamm-man.
I like David Wain. As a founding member of both The State and Stella, and co-creator of Wet Hot American Summer (2001), I've been enjoying the man's comedy for decades. Even in the films I'm not wild about, there are these moments of genuine, genre-deconstruction that are brilliant, and Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is chock-a-block with these moments. From an appearance by fellow The State / Stella alum Michael Ian Black as a minor character with a lot of important information, to Ken Marino as a noble paparazzi with a dream, to Jon Hamm's Mad Men co-star John Slattery as a fictionalized, pathetic version of himself, Wain and Marino know exactly how to twist familiar clichés into fun, new arrangements.
The film covers a lot of comedic ground: Vincent (Marino)'s tragic backstory is played largely straight, and relies on the absurd dignity of the character to carry the joke, while a later fight scene is full of over-the-top violence paired with clever acknowledgement of the genre's tropes: "Must have been 20 or 30 guys! It felt like the same couple guys over and over, but it wasn't!" There's even a segment where a gangster played by Jo Lo Truglio asks random people on the street if they've seen Gail and Otto, and it was clearly filmed in a guerrilla / Candid Camera style, as evidenced by one passerby recognizing him as Charles Boyle from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
As is the case with all modern comedy, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass probably won't tickle everybody's funny bone, but I think it's a rewarding watch. Wain & co. continually zag when you expect a zig, going for a subtler joke than the obvious one, or a more absurd punchline you couldn't foresee. Not that there aren't clichés or obvious gags, from the self-aware voice-over narration of small town postman played by Fred Melamed, to an encounter with an assault rifle-wielding 'Weird Al' Yankovic, to having a character deliberately repeat the film's ethos to make sure we're all on the same page. But as is the case with everything Wain has been attached too, they are just one spice in the dish.
The Packaging: 3.5 stars
This isn't anything special, packaging-wise. It's your basic Blu-ray case with a representation of the Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass poster, which is, for some reason, aggressively orange, and features Gail in the center surrounded by many of the characters she encounters on her journey. I don't want to talk poorly of a film I enjoyed, but I feel okay since this isn't exclusively a Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass problem: Why are comedy posters so bad?
Seriously, think about it: what is the last good comedy poster you've seen? For some reason, they tend to just feature the characters on a solid color background that gives you almost no insight into the film. In the '90s, for whatever reason, the color was almost universally white but thankfully, I think, that has fallen by the wayside somewhat. The way I look at it is: if you don't want to hang advertising your film on one joke, or one location, why not take the classic pop music album cover route? Y'know, all the band members sitting in a bathtub like the Mamas and the Papas album If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears. Or whatever. It's not much, but it's better than nothing.
The Video: 4 stars
As always with new releases, there isn't much to exactly marvel over. There is no restoration needed, etc., but I will say that for the most part Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass looks great. There are some janky visuals within the film itself, but I obviously don't think this specific release has anything to do with that. I'm talking about things like weird establishing shots with obvious elements like billboards added in post, or the occasional celebrity cameo obviously being green screened. If this were anything other than a comedy (or a Neil Breen movie), these things would obviously be larger issues, but everything being relative I think they're fine.
As a film, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass has a nice look to it, for the most part. A lot of the scenes in Gail's hometown and in Hollywood have a nice, bright look but there are occasional sequences that come across a little flat. This is another issue with comedies by and large: they lack a strong visual aesthetic to either build off of, or subvert. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass has the strongest visuals when dealing with their antagonists, a group of mobsters. Scenes set in boss Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore)'s restaurant play into the crime movie visuals with a stronger green or yellow tint, and then later, scenes in an abandoned western movie set have a real sun-baked look.
The Audio: 4 stars
The audio here, as with the visuals, is solid. I have a three-channel sound bar and noticed no balance issues. The only volume issue I encountered is that the studio logos and the included theatrical trailer are significantly louder than the movie itself, so I was busy bumping the volume up while Frank the Mailman (Melamed) was beginning his introduction to the world of Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.
The one thing most worth remarking on with regards to the film's score is that I kept realizing one bit of music or another was actually acting as meta-commentary. As in, it would be a bespoke song about exactly what was happening onscreen, but was presented in such a straight-faced and believable way that it took me a moment to realize it WASN'T a real song. If you've seen Arrested Development, and are familiar with its "Mr. F!" or "Coincidence!" musical stings, you'll have a good idea of what I'm talking about.
The Supplements: 1 star
There are basically no features to speak of here. As far as I can recall, this is the barest release I have so far covered. Aside from the Theatrical Trailer, it's a bit of a ghost town. So I guess I'll talk about the trailer: it's fine. It showcases a lot of the varied gags from the film, but is otherwise very, for lack of a better term, normal for a trailer. I know Hollywood doesn't really do bespoke trailers like this anymore, but do you remember the trailer for Toys (1992) with Robin Williams enigmatically standing in a field of tall grass?
I know I've spent a good chunk of this review referring back to other, unrelated things, but that's actually kind of appropriate for a film as Hollywood-referential as Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is. Regardless, I'd have loved to see a trailer with David Wain and Ken Marino standing at the Hollywood sign and talking about the magic of the movies as their pitch for the flick. I'm sure they'd have made it funny. They're good at that.
- Theatrical Trailer (2:07) (HD)
Final Thoughts: Recommended
I would definitely recommend Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass to most folks I know who dig comedy. It isn't challenging, but it does, as David Wain movies tend to do, come across as pretty dry in tone, despite all the weirdness, violence, and what have you. The first time I saw Wet Hot American Summer, I thought it was "Fine." and it wasn't until a subsequent rewatch that it really started to click for me.
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