I join CTV NewsChannel anchor Akshay Tandon to talk about the new releases in theatres, including the live-action “Moana,” the sport comedy “Racewalkers” and the wacky “Wizard of Oz” homage “Gail Daughtery and the Celebrity Sex Pass.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Fast reviews for busy people! Watch as I review three movies in less time than it takes to drink a Mai Tai. Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the live-action “Moana,” the sport comedy “Racewalkers” and the wacky “Wizard of Oz” homage “Gail Daughtery and the Celebrity Sex Pass.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” Zoey Deutch plays a Midwestern hairdresser who travels to Hollywood in search of her “celebrity sex pass” after her fiancée hooks up with an a-lister.
CAST: Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Ben Wang, Sabrina Impacciatore, Jon Hamm, Weird Al” Yankovic, Henry Winkler, Elizabeth Perkins. Directed by David Wain.
REVIEW: A Hollywood farce that mistakes sincerity and commitment-to-the-bit for humor, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” stretches its “Wizard of Oz” parody to the breaking point.
The idea of a celebrity hall pass is simple. An agreement between couples, it allows both partners to get a one-time “pass” to sleep with a specific celebrity without it counting as cheating.
It’s a simple and fun hypothetical unless it actually happens.
That’s the case in “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.” Small town Kansas woman Gail (Zoey Deutch) and her fiancé, Tom’s (Michael Cassidy) relationship is put into doubt when the unlikely happens, and Tom meets and has relations with his celebrity pass, Jennifer Aniston, who plays herself.
Gail decides she must “even the scales.”
“I had a celebrity free pass thing with my fiancé,” she says, “but he took it literally. So now I need to have sex with Jon Hamm to even up the score and save my relationship.”
On her quest for some “Hammertime,” Gail and BFF Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) travel to Los Angeles in what becomes a loose riff on “The Wizard of Oz,” complete with stand-ins for Toto, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow and, of course, Jon Hamm as The Wizard.
Along the way they’re joined aspiring talent agent Caleb (Ben Wang), a paparazzo (Ken Marino) whose lifelong dream is to get a candid snap of Jon Hamm, Hamm’s former “Mad Man” co-star John Slattery who plays a comedic version of himself as an out-of-work, down-on-his-luck actor whose texts to Hamm always go unanswered, and a group of assassins (Sabrina Impacciatore, Joe Lo Truglio, Mather Zickel).
“Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” travels its own Yellow Brick Road in search of whimsy. It’s light and frothy, a nonsensical collection of scenes performed in a heightened, upbeat way, by a cast who energetically commits to the general ludicrous tone of the piece.
The consistent tone, however, when amplified, doesn’t have enough variance from scene to scene to hold interest.
That the cast are stymied by a script that leans into its absurdist style more than presenting genuinely funny moments blunts the film’s effectiveness.
The satire of celebrity culture and the chasm between Hollywood and the small-town Gail, representing Anytown USA, should have provided fertile ground but, time after time, the script, written by director David Wain and co-star Ken Marino, goes for silly over sentiment or any kind of satire with real bite. The result is a film that wastes a hall pass.
SYNOPSIS: The new documentary, “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” now playing in select theatres, is a look at the life, activism and career of the groundbreaking Oscar winning actress.
CAST: Marlee Matlin, Henry Winkler, Troy Kotsur, John Maucere, Aaron Sorkin, Lauren Ridloff, Jack Jason. Directed by Shoshannah Stern.
REVIEW: “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” is a celebrity documentary, a look back at an actor who burst on to the scene, earning an Oscar in her very first film role.
But it’s also much more than that.
It begins with the making of 1986’s “Children of a Lesser God,” the film that catapulted Marlee Matlin to fame and the subsequent tumultuous and abusive relationship with William Hurt, which meets the standard of any other slick Hollywood biography, but it does so with the Deaf community at the top of mind.
A longtime advocate for the Deaf community, Matlin’s story is told using a number of techniques to advocate for Deaf audiences. Interviews are closed captioned, but color coded so it’s easy to identify who is speaking, and one-on-one interviews with Deaf subjects, like the Oscar winning actor Troy Kotsur and John Maucere are presented in silence to highlight the natural fluidity of ASL conversation without the voice of a translator.
In another effective sequence, director Shoshannah Stern, who is also Deaf, shows Matlin at a family get-together, but we hear it from her perspective and are immersed in muffled, distorted sound. It’s impossible for her, or us as the audience, to discern what’s being said. More than any other part of the film, this scene illustrates Matlin’s isolation when she is the only deaf person in the room.
Connect that with another scene in which Matlin is directing an emotional episode of the TV drama “Accused.” When a scene featuring a deaf character, played by Lauren Ridloff, recounting her difficult upbringing with hearing parents wraps, Matlin breaks down, undoubtedly affected by the echoes of her own past.
These scenes speak to the heart of Matlin’s personal story and activism, which is less known than her high-profile acting career. Since becoming the first Deaf actor to win an Oscar in 1987, she has worked tirelessly for Deaf representation in film and TV, closed captions on television and policies that ensure equal access to education, employment, and media for Deaf individuals.
There are revelations about her troubled relationship with William Hurt and the sexual abuse she suffered, but by the time the end credits roll “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” reveals itself to be a touching story of strength and resilience, not a typical Hollywood tell-all biography.
