Last summer, it was such a treat to see The Naked Gun in theaters and laugh with giddy abandon. How rare that is these days, when most comedy is relegated to meme churn or, I guess, snarky asides in blockbuster spectaculars. An honest to goodness comedy, with no mission beyond making its audience guffaw, felt like a gift from on high. I worried we’d get nothing else like it for a long time, if ever. (I mean, I suppose there was Anaconda.) 

Thank god, then, for David Wain and Ken Marino, the longtime comedy allies who have made wonderfully absurd things together since the 1990s. They have a new film, Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, that is proudly stupid, a scattershot, oddball comedy that makes the friendly, generous offer of simple amusement. Gail Daughtry isn’t on a par with Wain’s true masterpiece, Wet Hot American Summer, but it is still welcomely recognizable as one of his singular creations. Both goofy and edgy, the film may not land every punchline, but it satisfies in visceral, pleasurable ways that a more sophisticated comedy could not. 

For some reason, Gail Daughtry is a Wizard of Oz homage — though, don’t worry, there’s nary a wheezy Wicked joke to be found in the whole picture. Zoey Deutch, bright and chipper with a glint of something darker in her eyes, plays the titular Kansan, a high-school cheerleader turned hairdresser who has just gotten engaged to her former football captain boyfriend. All is well in their sunshiny little life, in their cute little town, until Gail’s fiancé quite suddenly makes good on his “celebrity sex pass” — an agreement that, supposedly, many couples have. (You know the concept: a monogamous couple’s compact that each party may sleep with one famous crush, with impunity, should the improbable opportunity arise.) We do, in fact, meet the celebrity in question, but I won’t spoil who that is here. 

This sends Gail into something of a tailspin, and prompts her to take a trip to Los Angeles with her queer bestie, Otto (a winning Miles Gutierrez-Riley), where she ultimately decides that she’ll need to bed her celebrity pass — nice Midwestern boy Jon Hamm, of course — in order to balance the scales. And thus a wacky yellow brick road adventure begins, Gail and Otto (which might be an anagram for something…) picking up a few new friends along the way. There’s a scarecrow-ish CAA assistant (Ben Wang), a not-so-heartless paparazzo (Marino), and a cowardly John Slattery. It’s a game ensemble, all grooving on the peculiar and erratic rhythms of Wain’s (and Marino’s) comic sensibility. 

Jokes abound in Gail Daughtry, some short bursts of profanity and non sequitur, others more cerebral and longform. (Though, not that cerebral, really.) The gags fly fast and furious enough that it doesn’t really matter that plenty of them miss. At a Sundance full of depressingly unfunny comedies, Gail Daughtry seems practically Mark Twain Prize-worthy in comparison. 

Explaining any of the good stuff in detail would kind of kill the surprise, but I’ll say in broad overview that there’s a great hotel concierge bit, a riotously repetitive sequence of simple slapstick, a fugue of clever wordplay about the Wright Brothers (of all people). There’s cartoonish violence, over-the-top sex, and some inside-baseball Hollywood stuff that’s not too insidery, or too baseball-y.

The film certainly sags in places, stretches where Wain and Marino could have tightened up the timing, or simply added more jokes. But the overall effect of Gail Daughtry is to re-create the happily zonked university afternoons during which so many fans of my generation steeped ourselves in the elegant inanity of Wain’s output. (Wet Hot was something of a holy grail on my college campus, as it was no doubt on many others.) It’s a kick to have this particular vibe return to us after so long; it’s the first Wain film of its kind in over a decade, though of course there were the Wet Hot miniseries to tide us over. 

The film was clearly made on the cheap (though, it was done so in actual Los Angeles, which is commendable!) and the humor is not exactly the most broadly accessible. Thus, I don’t really know what its commercial viability might be, even on streaming. But I hope that Gail Daughtry finds its eager audience, and that those viewers then begin to clamor for more such movies, the kind that dare to go for a laugh without trying to reassure us of their hip, irony-vetted intelligence. Y’know, good old-fashioned comedies that aim for the gut while, yes, lightly tickling the mind. It’s high time to get dumb again — at least at the movies.

Another World, 2025. 

Directed by Tommy NG Kai Chung.

Featuring the voices of Chung Suet-ying, Christy Choi Hiu-Tung, Louis Cheung, Kay Tse, and Will Or Wai-Lam.

SYNOPSIS: 

Gudo, a spirit tasked with guiding souls to their next life, encounters Yuri, a girl whose pent-up anger threatens to turn her into a monster, causing a dangerous imbalance in the universe.

Cinema is all about stepping into another world, but few will match the kind of unbridled creativity and imagination bursting forth from Tommy Kai Chung Ng’s beautifully macabre metaphysical animated epic.

What lies beyond our time on this Earth has preoccupied filmmakers for generations. From The Tree of Life to Disney Pixar’s Soul, and Beetlejuice, the unknown has been brought to life on the big screen ad infinitum. In adapting Naka Saijo’s graphic novel Sennenki: Thousand-Year Journey of an Oni, the debutant director has not only delivered one of the first animated feature films to come out of Hong Kong in over two decades, but Another World should sit comfortably alongside the likes of Ghibli’s Grave of Fireflies in the way it deals with themes of loss and death.

The complexities of this world are broken down into quite a simple set of rules for the film to follow. When someone dies, before they are reincarnated, their souls are escorted through a magical realm known as Another World. Assigned a spirit guide, these transient souls shed the memories of their life, before being ushered through a waterfall to begin their new existence, leaving behind only a piece of string, knotted with the unresolved issues of their existence.

Our glimpse into this world of unlimited string focuses on a spirit named Gudo, who is guiding a young girl named Yuri to her next life, when he quickly becomes intrigued by her human emotions and the insistence that she finds her missing brother. This sends the two of them on an afterlife-encompassing adventure that spans an eternity and more.

With the visual world-building required for such a creatively vibrant landscape, coupled with the ambition of the multi-stranded plot, there’s an initial worry that there may be an imbalance between the two during Another World’s opening salvo. However, twenty minutes into the time-jumps and laying out of the lore of this new world, each vignette feels so seamlessly stitched together and in such a meticulous fashion that it leaves you in awe of the storytelling behind it.

It would have been so easy for the filmmakers to allow the exquisite animation to carry a half-hearted plot forward, but the two elements work in tandem to deliver some breathtaking sequences that also land with an emotional heft.

A death-bed confessional, the heartbreaking fate of a family trapped on a rickety bridge, a scene in a wheat-barn that’s as devastating as the Game of Thrones ‘Red Wedding’, and the horror (oh the horror) of a bowl of soup. They’re threads knotted together with a devastating sadness that lingers long after we’ve been hand-held into the next life.

Much of the film’s heart can be found in the spirit taking us on this journey. Gudo is an imminently likeable creation.  A masked sprite, with witch-like hands that belie his gentle personality and a tilted mask adorned with a perma-fixed grin that also provides plenty of contradictions to the depth behind this unreadable façade. His mid-film uttering, delivered wonderfully by Chung Suet-ying, that he can “feel my heart shattering” is one of many moments in which the audience will unavoidably feel the same.

The setting may be fantastical, but there are still enough moments that hold up a mirror to the real world, not least with the creation of the ‘Wraths’. Born from a seed of evil growing insidiously inside a human, they burst forth, transforming the host into a hideous, but often gorgeously rendered monster. Not only are they involved in some of the film’s most impressive set-pieces, they are also a manifestation of hatred, and a warning of the toll that being angry at the world takes on us all. Another World might be rooted in loss and melancholy, but its overall message is one of optimism and new beginnings.

A stunning, layered, multi-generational tale of grief and belief, Another World is an endlessly creative piece of storytelling that will put a knot in your stomach and some hope in your heart.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

“Directed by Sam Raimi” was all I needed to hear when I decided to go check out the sneak preview of Send Help (2026). Outside of the synopsis and a few screen grabs on the Marcus Theaters website, I went in completely blind, and left the theater with a smile on my face. It’s a good bet you will, too.

Read on for my spoiler free review…

Synopsis

Linda Liddle and Bradley Preston, two colleagues who find themselves stranded on a deserted island after they are the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it becomes an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.

Sam Raimi directed the film. It stars Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, and Dennis Haysbert.

It’s A Jungle Out There

In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks finds himself stranded on a desert island with only a volleyball named Wilson to keep him company. Now, imagine if you will, instead of sporting goods, you are stranded in the same situation, but with your asshole boss. That’s the setup for Send Help, which pairs hard working and underappreciated Linda (Rachel McAdams) with entitled nepo baby Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) who just so happens to have passed her over for a promised promotion right before their plane goes down on the way to Thailand. What follows is a wickedly funny survival tale that takes the audience on a genre bending roller coaster ride as only Sam Raimi can.

The Odd Couple

Once the stage is set, Send Help becomes a two person show. Fortunately, Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien have a great chemistry that propels the story forward in a compelling, humorous way. Familiar tropes evolve into clever twists and turns, intermixed with the tongue in cheek humor and hilarious gross out moments that audiences have come to expect from a Sam Raimi picture.

There are laughs aplenty, as the couple’s misadventures had the preview audience, myself included, in stitches on more than one occasion. As the film progresses, the story morphs until you’re not quite sure where it’s going to go next, but it all comes together in an ultimately satisfying, darkly humorous way. The film features music by Danny Elfman, whose tropical score hits all the right notes. Be sure to keep your eyes open for a Bruce Campbell appearance (of sorts). This is Sam Raimi after all.

Final Thoughts

Send Help is smart and funny. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien shine. This film was a pleasant surprise and a real treat for Sam Raimi fans and fans of dark humor and comedy horror in genaral.

Send Help releases in theaters nationwide on January 30, 2026. I heartily recommend you check it out!