The fashions and furnishings of Czechoslovakia in the 1980s — the height of the state’s racist program of suppressing the Roma population through coerced sterilization — are painstakingly evoked in Slovakian filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský’s “Only Beautiful Things to Look At.” But the film’s attractive yet oddly bloodless presentation gives the impression of a period drama set much farther back, as though we’re peering at the prettily mounted arrowheads and artifacts of a long-gone atrocity through museum glass. Alongside the decision to centralize the perspective of a white female doctor, this old-school, soft-focus approach robs an undeniably well-intentioned movie of a vital edge of urgency and discomfort, allowing viewers to consign the cruelties it outlines to some imaginary distant past, when in truth, the sterilization policy continued well into the 21st century in both the Czech and Slovak Republics. 

The film begins with a montage of young Roma women, each shot as though for a studio portrait, impassively absorbing an offscreen voice lecturing them about family planning. “Sterilization,” the voice concludes disingenuously, “allows Gypsy women to improve their family’s quality of life.” The intention behind the portraiture is noble: to put faces to a crime more often recounted in impersonal statistics, when it is acknowledged at all. But although framed and lit with dignity by cinematographer Juraj Chlpík, none of these Roma women speak. The first words of argument or protest we hear are from Ingrid (Anna Geislerová), the film’s white protagonist, and she is not talking about reproductive rights at all. Instead, she is facing an all-male panel of her peers as she interviews for the role of head doctor at the hospital where she works. Ingrid knows the position will very likely go to one of her male colleagues, but that doesn’t stop her being angry and disappointed when it actually does.

Outside her work at the hospital, which in large part comprises assessing and performing the sterilizations in a procedure that leaves patients with a small scar beneath the navel nicknamed “the bow,” Ingrid has what can only be described as a beautiful life. With her music teacher husband Maros (Vlad Ivanov), she lives in a gorgeous house in the countryside, where her bedroom, glass-paned on two sides overlooking a lush forest, looks almost like a fairytale princess’ lair. In the warm-lit evenings she and Maros read and drink wine and listen to classical music; on her days off she goes for walks in the forest or, when it’s hot, visits the nearby river and looks on benignly as Roma children bob along playfully on tire tubes.

It is only through her burgeoning friendship with Agata (a radiant Simona Boledovičová), a sweet-natured orderly who is reticent about her Romani idenitity, that Ingrid eventually starts to become uncomfortable with the work she does helping the hospital meet its government-recommended quotas for sterilizations. Ostrochovský’s film, co-written with Marek Leščák, is not anything quite as crude as a white savior narrative, but it is certainly one that assumes the best conduit for a wide audience to understand the cruelty visited on Czechoslovakian Roma families, is the moral awakening of a white woman. 

This faulty focus is particularly frustrating because Agata’s own story, and the manner in which she comes to reconcile herself with her Roma background, is by far the more intriguing narrative strand. As an orphan, Agata was separated from her sister Jula (an excellent Eva Mores), with each then going on to lead very different lives. Jula married within the Roma community, has had two children and is pregnant with an unwanted third. Agata, who at first barely acknowledges their connection, has been more independent, living with a roommate and working at the hospital, and recently getting serious with a boyfriend. “He’s white?” queries Jula in surprise when she hears that he’s a soldier. “Good for you.”

The tides of unspoken resentment and disapproval that flow between the sisters are fascinating, with Agata able to move between Jula’s world, in a cramped flat in a crumbling building where kids play in dirty stairwells, and Ingrid’s enviably refined domestic environment. Eventually, just like Chlpík’s limpid camera, Agata comes to see the beauty in both, when in the film’s most moving moment, the sisters tacitly reconcile while Jula’s kids splash about in the tub at bathtime. There would have been the opportunity here to probe the long-term consequences for the Roma women bearing “the bow,” many of whom had been conned into a procedure that was misrepresented to them, in a language they did not speak, or in documentation they could not read.

Instead, the film insistently returns us to Ingrid. As she’s kept awake by the first stirrings of her conscience, as she lazes in rumpled white bedsheets watching a beetle trundle across her pillow, as she’s depicted in macro close-ups that emphasize the blondeness of her hair, the fairness of her skin, the blueness of her eyes. Indeed, right up to a finale which resolves the remaining conflict with a rather glib miracle, the film’s loveliness practically becomes a liability, placing the real plight of the Roma several removes of perspective and aesthetic manipulation away, until you begin to wonder why we’re being given only beautiful things to look at, when there are so many ugly things that better warrant the attention. 

Comedy is a matter of taste and preference — it’s a deeply personal thing. Which makes it hard for a critic to give a blanket assessment of a specific kind of comedy, especially if it didn’t work for them, but clearly worked for others (the laughter or lack thereof is the indication). “It’s not funny,” the critic says, “well I had fun,” someone else can reply, and then we’re at an impasse.

Which is the dilemma one finds oneself in with “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” a very strange and shaggy Hollywood satire of sorts from David Wain and The State crew, still riding the goodwill of “Wet Hot American Summer” after all these years. If only this were as funny.

“Gail Daughtry” lives in the same world as that iconic summer camp spoof, as well as Wain’s 2014 rom-com parody, “They Came Together,” in that he’s playing with genre convention and expectation, taking well-known norms to the goofiest extremes. But those films hewed more closely to their respective genres, while “Gail Daughtry” is totally scattered, combining crime and spy movie tropes with a fish-out-of-water comedy and a Hollywood send-up. It has far too many ideas for its own good, and yet no ideas that are good enough to sustain this bizarre curio of a comedy.

What’s ironic is that one of the problems driving this wacky plot forward is the characters have to come up with a movie idea to pitch to star Jon Hamm (playing himself of course), leading them to do some pretty inane and shockingly violent things. It’s almost as if Wain and co-writer and co-star Ken Marino had no idea for a movie, then baked their search for an idea into their script, and then turned it into a madcap adventure about a woman on a quest to have sex with Jon Hamm. What an ouroboros!

OK, about the sex quest. Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) is a chipper hairdresser from Kansas born without the part of the brain that recognizes sarcasm or irony. She’s a cheerful, Pollyanna-ish naïf whose literal-mindedness is almost as extreme as Amelia Bedelia. Her childhood sweetheart and fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) is the same. She tells him about the concept of the “celebrity sex pass” as a joke, and he promptly boinks Jennifer Aniston at local book reading.

(Nitpicky aside: why didn’t they use the common nomenclature “hall pass”? Is it copyrighted? “Celebrity sex pass” is clunky and sounds like an off-brand version of the well-known slang.)

That infidelity crisis is how Gail ends up in Los Angeles determined to bang Hamm, collecting a motley crew of similarly clueless helpers along the way. There’s her best friend Otto (Miles Guttierez-Riley), her salon bestie; Caleb (Ben Wang), an overly ambitious intern at Creative Artists Agency; Vince (Marino), a screenwriter turned paparazzo with a heart of gold; and John Slattery, as John Slattery, down on his luck. An accidental briefcase swap has a pair of thugs on their tail, in a forgettable and underdeveloped B-plot.

With a parade of celebrity cameos and collaborators in bit parts, “Gail Daughtry” at times feels like an excuse for Wain and co. to make something at home with all of their friends. Fair enough, it’s great to see all these people employed, but what about what we’re watching? Behold, the Los Angeles of the middle-aged working comedian: the CAA lobby, the Chateau Marmont, Griffith Park, etc. And the plot is as half-baked as the pitch they present to Hamm.

What’s actually interesting about this comedy is the distinct streak of despair and even resentment that reveals itself at the climax, a feeling of helplessness and uselessness. Everyone’s been striving to make it in this crazy town: the intern, the actor, the paparazzo. But not even Jon Hamm can help them get a movie made; even he feels inherently powerless. There’s an unexplored anxiety vibrating there that feels the most thematically fruitful, about what it means, some 25 years after bursting onto the scene with a generation-defining comedy, about maintaining the work, the drive, a sense of purpose, after years of strikes, and in the face of a constricting industry. Do they still have it? Is the dream still alive?

Maybe that’s why Wain and Marino need to invent a dreamer stand-in with Gail, a guileless eternal optimist who knows nothing of the craven Los Angeles and accepts everything at face value (though she is filled with a scary bit of rage too). She might behave like she has a head injury, but she’s going to achieve her goal, dammit. “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass” might not be as funny as “Wet Hot American Summer” (for this critic), but reframed, it serves as a fascinating status update on life in La La Land for this troupe.

‘Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sexual content, violence/bloody images and language)

Running time: 1:33

How to watch: In theaters July 10

Wainheads will be delighted to see his alums in cameos: Kerri Kenney-Silver, Michael Ian Black, Thomas Lennon, and supporting roles for Zickel and Truglio. A large portion of the cast are his homies. But with Deutch, Gutierrez-Riley, Wang, Slattery, Impacciatore, and yes, Hamm, it’s as if they’re being inducted into a new mad family. Wain and Marino are basically catching Pokémon and hoping they can hold onto the roster (by that logic, yes, Paul Rudd is a legendary Pokémon). The film is anchored by Zoey — everything everywhere all this summer with Voicemails From Isabelle to Minions & Monsters — Deutch in the Dorothy Gale role, exuding a high level of perkiness consistent with the character’s can-do, wide-eyed, midwestern charm and heart.  

A major standout, Ben Wang finally gets to show off his comedic abilities, portraying a self-assured, quick-witted agent who makes me laugh every time he reveals his sheltered upbringing in snappy whines at every inconvenience. Sabrina Impacciatore, who has proven to be a comedic juggernaut in The Paper, is having so much fun hamming it up as the mob boss-esque wicked witch counterpart, torturing her henchmen and deliciously chewing up the scenery whenever onscreen. I don’t think they use her to the height of her comedic prowess, but she’s a delight nonetheless.  John Slattery is the film’s comedic MVP. The way the writers use his over-the-top character for comedy is downright hilarious every time. They use him as either a punchline or a force of nature, and he’s great. This movie is like Mad Men propaganda, and by God, it works. As someone who’s never seen it, Gail allowed me a better appreciation for Slattery and Hamm. 

Man, we don’t deserve Jon Hamm. This is the second time I’ve seen him play a silly, fictionalized version of himself this year (the other being the SXSW crowd-pleasing rom-com Wishful Thinking, which Gail distributor Sony Pictures Classics acquired), and he also voice-acted in his comedic Mayor Jerry role in Hoppers. Maybe working with Wain in 2007’s The Ten was the canon event, but I consider his weird little sex scene with Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids his awakening. Since then, I’ve only seen him as unserious, and it’s delightful. Oz-like in appearance, he’s funny and befitting the film’s overall light, joyful nature.

LAST STATEMENT

Ultimately, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a campy, delightful romp that succeeds as both a distinctive Hollywood‑centric riff and a Wizard of Oz reimagining, retaining a loving, twisted, demented charm. It’s a weird description, but it’s so high‑spirited and light‑hearted despite being strangely ultraviolent. It might as well be a live‑action episode of Smiling Friends (RIP), yet it’s everything the theatrical market needs today. Ten years ago, this would’ve been a studio production rather than an indie Sundance acquisition, but thank God it exists for the big screen. More absurdist Gail Daughtrys for cinemas (not streaming), please, because this is the most fun to be had in a theater all summer, if not the year thus far.