Sundance movie review: 'Celebrity Sex Pass' is silly, naughty fun

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, which premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a silly comedy based on the popular relationship myth. A firm commitment to silliness and dirty jokes is comedy gold.

Gail (Zoey Deutch) is engaged to be married to Tom (Michael Cassidy). She learns about the idea of a celebrity sex pass, when each partner picks one famous person with whom they are allowed to cheat, at the hair salon where she works with Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley).

When Tom actually sleeps with his, a very self-deprecating celebrity cameo, he encourages Gail to find hers, Jon Hamm. Gail and Otto visit Los Angeles for a hair convention and spend the weekend trying to find Hamm.

Director David Wain and co-writers Wain and Ken Marino's style is known to fans of Wet Hot American Summer, They Came Together and their sketch comedy shows. It's not even one specific style like Naked Gun's Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker or Monty Python. It's every form of absurdity and satire.

Gail's small town of Wilbur, Kansas, is quaint to the extreme, with Deutsch amping up her innocent, friendly smile. The film mocks the device of narration, as mailman Frank (Fred Melamed) gives irrelevant information, yet repeatedly chastises viewers harshly.

Be sure to listen to the intercoms at the airport for some background jokes and even a reference to the classic slapstick spoof Airplane! Gail and Otto's Hollywood Blvd. montage includes taking in the back alley offerings as if they are equally whimsical sightseeing.

Tone shifts suddenly and frequently, and non sequiturs are welcome interruptions to the story. Gail mentions a very dark backstory very late in the film, as if it is just an aside in casual conversation.

Meanwhile, she spends the whole film trying to sleep with Hamm as if it's her small-town dream of making it big.

Everywhere Otto and Gail go to look for Hamm, they make another friend who joins their search. Caleb (Ben Wang) works the front desk at Hamm's agency, CAA, and becomes invested in their quest.

A paparazzo (Marino) sees the chance to photograph Hamm as his redemption. Even Mad Men co-star John Slattery (as himself) agrees to help. If the parallel to The Wizard of Oz was not apparent, there is even a hot air balloon at the end.

Each character adds a distinct tangent of absurdity to the proceedings. The photographer has a running gag about his very long backstory about failing to photograph Hamm.

When a security guard (Tobie Windham) won't let the group in to see Hamm, Slattery sticks his foot in the doorway and it just keeps going way further than that common scenario ever goes in a dramatic film.

In another nod to structural cliches of quirky Hollywood comedies, Gail had a suitcase identical to that of a criminal. The bags got switched at the airport, so villain Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore) sends her goons, Sergio (Joe Lo Truglio) and Nico (Mather Zickel), to recover the suitcase.

Sergio and Nico treat their portion of the movie like an action movie, but one in which their dark web technology fails to locate tourists and basic action is too exhausting for them.

The action climax mocks action hero one-liners, including a famous Schwarzenegger line out of context, and a very observable pattern of stunt performers.

With so many various comedy tools employed, Wain and Marino don't make it easy to pinpoint exactly why their movies and shows are so funny. However, it is just that daring anarchy that makes them so rewarding to watch.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.