I’m just going to talk freely about this movie because if you cared about spoilers you’d have seen it by now. But it’s far more likely that you don’t know it exists. David Wain movies aren’t usually big money makers. Oh, also, the 50th Ruddtrospective is coming up, let me know if there’s a Rudd movie I haven’t covered or one I didn’t review properly that you’d like me to revisit for the 50th now that I’m really good at this blog thing. Write in, with your Ruddgestions! (Paul Rudd movie suggestions)

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass(2026) stars Zoey Deutch, Ben Wang, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Jon Hamm, Michael Ian Black, Sabrina Impacciatore, Kerri Kenney, Richard Kind, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Fred Melamed, David Wain, and Mather Zickel. It also features Jennifer Aniston, Elizabeth Banks, Penn Jillette, Marguerite Moreau, Elizabeth Perkins, Paul Rudd, Henry Winkler, and ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic as themselves. It was written by Ken Marino and David Wain and directed by David Wain.

The Synopsis
IMDb says “When her fiancé uses their “celebrity pass” agreement, Midwest bride Gail Daughtry travels to Hollywood seeking revenge by pursuing her own celebrity encounter.”

Background
David Wain directed Wet Hot American Summer and Role Models, as well as some movies I have yet to get to on here. Most of his movies include Paul in some small way or another. I’m not sure how big his cameo in this is, but it’s a new release and I really wanted to check it out. By the way, screw the movie theaters near me that only showed it for a week, I missed out! But I’m getting to it now, and very legally.

General Thoughts
This movie absolutely rules. It honestly caught me off guard. This is exactly the kind of movie I wanted to watch right now. And I had no idea. It’s got the ridiculous logic of a David Wain movie and a genuinely heartfelt performance at its core. There’s a scene where John Slattery as John Slattery beats the shit out of a room full of dudes and punches a man’s face off. But it’s all balanced perfectly. I wrote my thoughts as I watched, so it’s all pretty much there, everything I think and have to say. It’s a funny premise. It’s a really stupid movie, with incredibly specific jokes. All movies should be like this.

Some Stuff John Wrote Down During The Movie

• I read ahead of time that this is basically a sex comedy homage to Wizard of Oz, and they make that quite clear. There’s photos of Gail as a little girl as Dorothy in a play.
• Fred Melamed is the narrator, you can’t go wrong there.
• First laugh of the movie: The comparison of a professionally sketched portrait of Gail and her school sweetheart, drawn by Gail in the 8th grade, and a stick figure drawing of the two of them by her sweetheart drawn in the 11th grade.
• At a book signing for Jennifer Aniston’s boring cookbook, Gail says “I’m a huge fan of your acting work as well, even before The Morning Show.”
• A conversation about celebrity sex passes leads Tom to have sex with Jennifer Aniston after the signing. And during the sex he talks about how he’s never seen F.R.I.E.N.D.S, and she says she’ll have her assistant send him some DVD’s.
• Gail’s hairdresser friend Otto: “There’s no flowery way to say this, I have to take a mondo shit.”
• Gail’s fiancé Tom, via text: “Sorry 4 penetrating Aniston.”
• I don’t want this to become exclusively me writing quotes. But I’m having a good time. I don’t always like David Wain movies, but this is kind of a great premise.
• So they’re in Hollywood for a hairdresser conference and they accidentally took a briefcase from two criminals helping a woman who wants to take down an evil business of some kind because the criminals were taking a photo with Henry Winkler. Your usual stuff.
• Oh hey, Richard Kind the taxi driver!
• For some reason Richard Kind’s go-to example of a Hollywood celebrity is Elizabeth Perkins, the love interest in Big.
• Tom is more worried about whether the wedding is happening or not in terms of paying the caterer.
• I don’t always like David Wain’s movies, but sometimes his and Ken Marino’s absurdist writing is exactly what I’m looking for.
• Shoutout to Michael Ian Black as a guy who hands out Hollywood star maps that exclusively have addresses for people like Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon, and someone else on the Johnny Carson show presumably. People who have been dead for years, is the point.
• We meet Ben Wang at the Creative Arts Agency. I like that guy, he’s a good actor. I also like that whenever someone says the Creative Arts Agency, there’s a background choral singing of “CAA”.
• When Joe Lo Truglio, one of the criminals, is out on the Walk of Fame looking for Gail, someone mistakes him for Charles Boyle, the character he played in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
• Gail’s big plan to get over the gate to Jon Hamm’s house is for her, Otto and Ben Wang to take off their clothes and make a rope but then just climb over without using the rope at all.
• Oh great, Weird Al is here about to shoot at Gail and her friends with a machine gun. And again, the solution is to take off their clothes. Man, I’m having a great time with this movie.
• It’s also worth mentioning that Penn Jillette is also here saying nothing at all. That’s funny. Continuing his inexplicable string of cameos after playing that dirtbag in Marty Supreme.
• So Gail is Dorothy. Otto is Toto. Ben Wang, the wannabe agent, is presumably the Scarecrow. Ken Marino is now here, a paparazzo. He’s the Tin Man.
• There’s nothing really corresponding them to these original characters but presumably they’ll get what they want at the end.
• It has to be said, this movie is really made by Zoey Deutch’s performance. She’s incredibly sincere and innocent and without it this movie about wanting to have sex with a celebrity would feel quite sleasy.
• Oh hey, it’s John Slattery! The Cowardly Lion! Or maybe the Tin Man came first.
• Ken Marino: “John Slattery hasn’t had an acting gig in over a decade.” That’s certainly not true.
• Jon Hamm’s security guy is insane. He just slammed a door on John Slattery’s foot like fifty times and then punched him in the face.
• I love that everyone in this movie immediately understands and sympathizes with Gail’s plan to sleep with Jon Hamm. Which was suggested to her by a Psychic, by the way.
• “Guys, I know we all just met, but it feels like it’s been more than a week.”
• The security guard empathizes with Gail’s situation because his wife was disemboweled by a bull who crashed through the stadium barriers at a bull fight.
• This movie rules. See, this is the kind of movie I want Paul to be doing more often, but I know he’s probably in it for five seconds.
• The case has now been opened. It has lots of official files. I don’t remember a movie with a criminal’s case being used to take down horrible companies.
• Oh so in order to meet Jon Hamm, they need to pitch Jon Hamm a movie, and they want to use these papers about a global conspiracy as a basis for their script.
• I really wish I’d seen this in theaters.
• Thomas Lennon is here as the “Rip Curl King” in a big long wig.
• Kudos to the shot of our crew running down the scares which they reused three times except for changing the floor signs.
• HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
• ONE OF THE CRIMINALS JUST SHOT OTTO IN THE HEAD BUT AT THE AIRPORT HE TOLD SECURITY HE HAD A METAL PLATE IN HIS HEAD SO THE BULLET PINGED OFF HIS HEAD AND WENT DIRECTLY BACK THROUGH MATHER ZICKLE’S HEAD!!!
• Ben Wang: “This is a classic case of two guys on the ground.”
• I feel like that’s a joke Marino and Wain have used in their movies before.
• Gail to Otto: “You’ve been my most consistent, my most loving, loyal friend since my parents’ double suicide.” WHAT THE FUCK?!
• I have yet to shout out Sabrina Impacciatore as Ludovica, the woman leading the criminals. She’s essentially the Wicked Witch in this, and she’s so funny and ludicrous in every single scene she’s in. It looks like she’s in The Paper too. I haven’t watched it.
• Maybe the best joke of the whole movie so far is John Slattery walking Ben Wang and Ken Marino onto an abandoned western town set and saying:
  “Hey, I know this place. We shot an episode of Love Boat here.”
  “Really? Here?”
  “It was a bottle episode.”
• But also John Slattery wasn’t on The Love Boat. I double checked.
• I’m gonna have to stop reciting quotes and plot points for a minute because people should just watch this movie. This is the only thing that would’ve made Coyote vs ACME better. More inexplicable bloodbaths with the same roster of extras over and over again.
• Jon Hamm is a very attractive man.
• There’s about five dozen running jokes and random gags that I haven’t mentioned, like a bit about a stain stick getting a whole body worth of blood out of a dress.
• I should watch Mad Men. I’ve never seen it.
• Jon Hamm: “I’m just the guy behind the curtain, pulling the levers.”
• So Jon’s gifts to each of the friends is just a shitty version of what they wanted. Ben Wang gets his entry level job back. John Slattery gets a part in a crappy student film that Jon doesn’t want. Otto gets a swag bag. Ken Marino gets his paparazzi photo of Jon Hamm. But Gail gets a graphic sex montage with Jon Hamm.
• It should be noted that Zoey Deutch is 23 years younger than Jon Hamm. But the guy who plays Tom is 24 years younger than Jennifer Aniston, so it works.
• Jon Hamm is in love with Gail Daughtry. Man, I loved when Dorothy beat the Wicked Witch to death and then had an extended sex montage with the Wizard.
• Is that Elizabeth Perkins as a taxi driver? Hahahahaha.
• Oh right, Paul Rudd is in this! He’s at the wedding. She’s still getting married, she’s resigning herself to a life in Kansas. But why is Paul at the wedding? And why does it look like he was green screened in? Oh, and he just winked at the camera.
• Hey, it’s Jon Hamm in a hot air balloon! This is the bit he was filming when he Zoomed in for the intro of Paul Rudd’s episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler”. And he’s taking Gail away in a hot air balloon. They’re gonna be fuck buddies. This is the movie’s language, not mine. I don’t swear, you know that.
• Now Fred Melamed is berating us for expecting him to narrate the movie.
• And now the movie is over. Just to clarify, Paul Rudd didn’t say a single word. Which is undoubtedly the joke. Maybe that’s the funniest joke in this movie, that I watched this for my blog and that prick doesn’t actually say anything. Wonderful. I loved it.

Overall Rating: 9.2/10(Man, what a great movie. I’ll definitely rewatch this soon.)
Rudd Rating: 8/10(Yes, all he does is wink at the camera, but he’s a charming guy! I will say, I am bummed that he’s devoting the majority of his time to shit like Anaconda when his friends are still making incredibly funny stupid movies. Though I can also appreciate that him being in it for two seconds and saying nothing is a joke in and of itself. But be in better stuff, Paul. Even the weirder stuff you’ve been doing hasn’t really led you to the roles you excel in. Maybe I should be Paul Rudd’s agent. That’s what I need from Wizard Jon Hamm. I feel like I deserve something after having to watch and review multiple seasons of Only Murders in the Building.)

Next time on Too Many Servings Of John… Something!!! I haven’t decided yet!