As the world continues fermenting its vile culture, the gang behind The State and Wet Hot American Summer is back to save you from the merciless onslaught of bad news. At least for 90 minutes.
The dynamic duo of director David Wain and screenwriter Ken Marino are now in their third decade of bringing a unique brand of irreverent comedy to cinema. In the wake of their MTV sketch comedy show The State, Wain and co. premiered their cult hit Wet Hot American Summer at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. This year, they return once more with Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, a hilarious Hollywood farce in their signature absurdist voice.
You know you’re in for a good time at the movies when Fred Melamed, playing a fourth-wall-breaking mailman, introduces himself as the narrator. He sets the scene of a small Kansas town where hairdresser Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) is living her best life. She’s got great friends and cannot wait to marry her high school sweetheart and start a family. Unfortunately, Gail inadvertently sabotages that suburban dream when she brings her fiancé Tom to a book signing of The Morning Show’s Jennifer Aniston (played by, yes, Friends star Jennifer Aniston). On the way, they discuss the one celebrity each of them gets a pass to hook up with. After a switch from Tilda Swinton to Aniston, Gail walks in on the two in the throes of passion. Utterly deflated, Gail’s friend at the salon, Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), convinces her to join him on a trip to Los Angeles so that she can pursue her celebrity sex pass: Jon Hamm. But once they arrive in Tinseltown, a classic bag switch (thanks to Henry Winkler) places them in the crosshairs of an international conspiracy to dismantle the global financial system.
If you’ve never seen Wet Hot American Summer, or any other of Wain’s films, they all represent a specific comedic taste sometimes referred to as anti-comedy, where it’s funny to be unfunny, to go for the “bad” or obvious joke in a knowing way. Wain takes this ironic view and applies it to movies, where there’s an embrace of the cliché, melodramatic, and metatextual. Lines are delivered with an insincere sincerity while cinematic tropes are executed in self-aware pastiche. In satire, there’s a dialogue with the audience, an inherent wink of “you know what we’re doing,” for which Wain and his frequent collaborators have been able to create a house style. Gail Daughtry is a more potent version of that, closer to Wain and Marino’s The Ten than the broader Role Models.
With Wain and Marino setting their sights on their own industry, they map their story onto The Wizard of Oz. As Gail and Otto are off to see Jon Hamm, their merry band grows with the additions of go-getter talent agency receptionist Caleb (Ben Wang), washed-up paparazzo Vincent (Ken Marino), and “washed-up” actor John Slattery. Deutch, Gutierrez-Riley, and Wang are all newcomers to the Wain-Marino world but have no problem keeping up with the fast-paced delivery and their repertory players.
As in Wain’s previous comedies, the heightened world is populated with ridiculous characters played by his fellow State alumni, including Kerri Kenny-Silver, Michael Ian Black, and Kevin Allison. Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel play bumbling assassins on the hunt for Gail while Tom Lennon immerses himself as Remy Fontaine, celebrity hairstylist and master of the slip curl. And as always, Wain’s stable is buttressed by a slew of celebrity cameos, including a gun-wielding “Weird” Al Yankovic and an ironically silent Penn Jillette.
Together, the core four cast bounce around Hollywood, from its corporatized tourist spots to the headquarters of talent agency CAA to an Old West movie set. While there is fun at its expense, there is also a love for Los Angeles in Gail Daughtry. As productions trade tax havens for the town synonymous with movie-making, Wain and Marino’s latest is shot completely on location.
If you’d ask David Wain and Ken Marino whether their modest independent film will be able to save theatrical comedy, original stories, and production in Los Angeles all in one fell swoop, I bet they’d say: absolutely.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.