We Had No Idea What This Was—Then We Were DYING
At first, we genuinely had no idea what was happening or why we were watching this. Then Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass just kept getting stupider, stranger and more committed to its own nonsense — and suddenly we were DYING. 😂
That is very much the assignment here. Directed by David Wain and written by Wain with Ken Marino, the 2026 comedy stars Zoey Deutch as Gail Daughtry, a small-town Kansas hairdresser whose engagement goes spectacularly sideways after her fiancé Tom actually uses the couple’s supposed celebrity “pass.” Gail’s response is apparently the only reasonable one left: head to Los Angeles and find Jon Hamm.
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The INYIM Movie-Night Edit
When a comedy is this proudly ridiculous, you might as well commit to the bit.
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From there, logic politely leaves the room. Gail heads west with her friend Otto, played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley, after a psychic convinces her that tracking down Hamm is somehow the path to restoring balance. The search grows into a full Hollywood fever dream involving a talent-agency assistant, a paparazzo, John Slattery playing himself, and even a group of Italian assassins. Yes. Assassins. In the Jon Hamm sex-pass movie.
And then there is Ken Marino, one of our absolute favorites in comedy — especially as the gloriously needy Streeter Peters on The Other Two. Marino plays Vincent here, but he is also all over the DNA of the movie as co-writer and producer alongside his longtime collaborator Wain. Once we realized who was behind this thing, the increasingly unhinged rhythm suddenly made a lot more sense.
The movie is also packed with random celebrity cameos, and honestly, we are not going to list every one of them because part of the fun is the constant “WAIT… is that—?” reaction. Jon Hamm and John Slattery are already baked into the plot as heightened versions of themselves, but the movie keeps tossing familiar faces into the chaos like somebody raided Hollywood’s contact list and started dialing.
Honestly, this is the funny we expected from RuPaul’s Stop! That! Train! and, for us, just did not get. Gail Daughtry hits that gloriously stupid spoof-comedy lane we grew up on — The Naked Gun, Spaceballs, the kind of comedy where everybody commits to an absurd premise like it is the most serious thing in the world. It is not trying to copy those movies; it just remembers something a lot of modern comedies forget: sometimes the joke can simply be ridiculous, and then you keep pushing it until everybody breaks.
What makes it work is that nobody seems interested in pretending the premise is normal. The film goes bigger, dumber and more absurd every time you think it has probably reached its limit, while Deutch keeps Gail moving through the madness with enough sincerity to hold the whole ridiculous thing together. It has that specific Wain/Marino comedy energy where the joke is not merely that something is stupid — it is how confidently everyone commits to making the stupid thing even more elaborate.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass opened in theaters on July 10, 2026 after premiering at Sundance earlier in the year. It is now available digitally and is also playing again in select theaters. If you like your comedy weird, raunchy, cameo-heavy and completely willing to take a left turn just because it can, this one sneaks up on you.
Watch the Official Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass Trailer
Sony Pictures Classics’ official trailer introduces Gail’s increasingly ridiculous Los Angeles mission to find Jon Hamm.
Watch Zoey Deutch, Ken Marino and David Wain’s Movie Watching 101
Deutch, Marino and Wain walk viewers through the fine art of watching a movie in a theater in this official promotional clip for Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.
Sources: Sony Pictures Classics; Sundance Institute.
