Producers: Anthony Bregman, Peter Cron, Ken Marino, David Wain, Crystine Zhang and Charles Zhong Director: David Wain Screenplay: David Wain and Ken Marino Cast: Zoey Deutch, Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Ben Wang, Sabrina Impacciatore, Michael Cassidy, Tobie Windham, Fred Melamed, Joe Lo Truglio, Matthew Jayson Cwern, Mather Zickel, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Michael Cassidy, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, Toby Huss, Kevin Allison, Beth Dover and Zac Oyana Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Grade: D
Back in 2001, “Wet Hot American Summer” came out to devastating reviews. It’s since become a cult movie. Those who adore it for whatever reason will probably find this latest offering from its writer-director David Wain and co-writer (and star) Ken Marino hilarious. In reality it’s a brutally unfunny celebration of stupidity in which everybody is an idiot, which presumably is the joke—you’re meant to laugh because you think you’re smarter. The reality is that if you laugh, you probably aren’t.
“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” is intended as a modern-day variant on “The Wizard of Oz,” set in contemporary Los Angeles, but in “Wizard,” it was only the Scarecrow who was brainless. Here, everyone is. That includes the title character played by Zoey Deutch, a Kansas hairdresser weeks away from marrying nerdy Tom (Michael Cassidy). The two inexplicably pledge that they’ll allow one another a “celebrity sex pass,” a single lapse of fidelity if it involves an esteemed star. Naturally Tom takes advantage of it at once, canoodling—and then some—with Jennifer Aniston after the partners-to-be attend one of her book signings.
Gail is, to put it mildly, nonplussed, and decides to accompany her colleague Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to a hairdressing convention in LA to decompress. As they amble about, she opts to visit a psychic (Kerri Kenney-Silver), who advises that she must level things with Tom by bedding her favorite celebrity—Jon Hamm. So she and Otto are off to find him.
Over the course of their journey, they bump into various celebrities (of a sort), most of whom participate in very unfunny bits, and add to their travelling group. The others who join the search party are Caleb (Ben Wang), an underling at a talent agency who gets fired for giving them the star’s (wrong) address; Vincent (Marino), a dissolute paparazzo whose career was derailed by his failure to get a photo of Hamm; and John Slattery, Hamm’s co-star on “Mad Men,” depicted as a has-been, but one with spunk.
The tradition Slattery represents, of actors playing off-kilter versions of themselves for laughs, continues when the group finally finds Hamm at a hotel, only to be barred from seeing him by his gatekeeper Terrence (Tobie Windham). He tells them they’ll be admitted only if they can pitch a screenplay to Hamm for him to star in.
That demand fortuitously dovetails with the second plot thread, the old standby of switched luggage. At the airport Gail’s bag had been accidentally swapped for an identical one being transported by two dopey gangland types, Sergio (Joe Lo Truglio) and Marco (Matthew Jayson Cwern)—the latter of whom will soon be replaced by the equally boobish Niccolo (Mather Zickel)—for Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore), a super-villainess who intends using the documents in the case to undermine the global financial system. Her goons—meant to be Damon Runyon types but falling far short of the model—are desperately trying to recover her bag and so are trailing Gail and her cohorts.
When Gail finally discovers the luggage switch, her friends suggest using Ludovica’s documents as the basis for a script to pitch to Hamm, but the wicked woman and her henchmen intervene before they can do so. Our dippy group manages to take the villains out—cue some cartoon violence—but their plan goes kaput anyway. Still, Hamm, like Slattery doing a send-up of himself, in his case as a preening egotist, nonetheless proves a nice guy by rewarding Gail and each of her buddies by fulfilling their dreams, at least after a fashion. Gail returns to Kansas intending to marry Tom after taking advantage of her celebrity sex pass, but Hamm has other ideas. (“The In-Laws” handled a similar idea much better.)
Theoretically this plot, though based on an absurd premise, might have worked had it been treated with some wit, but that’s a commodity sorely lacking here. The gags are for the most part moronic, the characters merely foolish. There are a few chuckles along the way, one being Terrence’s weird threats and another a bookending bit begun by Richard Kind and finished by Elizabeth Perkins. But apart from that bifurcated joke, and an early turn by Henry Winkler, most of the other “guest stars,” presumably appearing as a favor to Wain and Marino, are stuck in bits that fall embarrassingly flat; those misused include Elizabeth Banks, Penn Jillette, Robert Herjavec, Paul Rudd (one of the stars of “Summer,” who must consider himself fortunate to be blessed with only s silent smirk) and “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Among the actual stars, no one comes off well; they’re all directed to play to the rafters in an attempt to rustle up some laughs; Impacciatore and her cohorts are particularly over-the-top. Hamm and Slattery deserve at least some credit for poking fun at themselves. Fred Melamed, as a mailman who doles out exposition as needed, recites his dialogue in a way that indicates he knows the lines are dead as soon as they leave his mouth. Wain appears briefly onscreen as a magazine editor, demonstrating he’s as inept in front of the camera as he is behind it or at the typewriter.
The movie looks and sounds like a garish sitcom thanks to Kevin Atkinson’s glaring cinematography, Justin Lieb’s chintzy production design, Bryn Carter’s anything-goes costumes and Craig Wedren’s ultra-bouncy score. John Daigle’s editing can do little to avoid making the movie feel like a series of bad SNL sketches.
There’s a tradition of dumb comedies, of course, but to succeed they need characters with charm. Those on display here have none, and one is bound to regret travelling this yellow brick road with them.