Scattered laughs in 'Sex Pass'

    

    Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass brings a slapdash quality to a comedy that opts for a glut of gags that bob on a sea of silliness. Director David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) delivers a preposterous story, unremitting goofiness, and a disregard for credibility, driving his movie to zany extremes. 

     There's something refreshing about a movie without pretensions, but the problem with a scattershot approach to  comedy is that the laughs can be scattershot, as well. Wain and his writing partner, Ken Marino, open a mixed bag of jokes and spill them across an uneven 93 minutes.

     Zoey Deutch stars as a small-town Kansas hairdresser who's engaged to her high school sweetheart (Michael Cassidy). Enter the sex pass of the title.

     In a conversation neither seems to take seriously, Deutch’s Gail and Cassidy’s Tom give each other permission to sleep with the celebrity of their choice. No judgments will be made. No one will harbor grudges. Each of them will allow the other an infidelity one-off. 

     When Cassidy's Tom makes an improbable connection with Jennifer Aniston, who arrives in Kansas for a book signing, Gail decides the only way she can save her looming marriage is by having sex with her chosen celebrity, Jon Hamm. Balance matters.

      As luck (or contrivance) would have it, Gail has an opportunity to attend a convention in Los Angeles, but she has more in mind than keeping up with the latest styles. She wants to sleep with Hamm as part of the ridiculous game she has played with her fiancé.

     Most of the movie takes place in Los Angeles, where Gail and her hairdressing colleague (Miles Gutierrez Riley) hook up with a lowly employee at the CAA talent agency (Ben Wang), a down-on-his-luck photographer (Marino), and John Slattery, the actor who worked with Hamm on Mad Men but who -- at least in the movie -- has fallen on hard times.

       A plot of sorts emerges. Thanks to the swap of  lookalike suitcases at LAX, Gail winds up in possession of plans drawn up by a conspiracy to tank the global economy. Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel are the dumber-than-dirt henchmen who work for the plan's mastermind (Sabrina Impecciatore), who wants her documents returned.

        No sense pointing out more. Know, though, that Deutch makes an excellent plucky innocent who smiles her way through a showbiz world that might intimidate others. Some of the dialogue is funny, and Wain even finds a way to take a poke at big-screen violence with a gun-heavy scene set on an abandoned Western movie set.

       Initially appalled by the group, Slattery eventually buys in, and Wang delivers a flurry of amusing high-speed dialogue as an aspiring agent.

       I haven't mentioned that Fred Melamed plays a mailman, who functions as the move's occasional narrator. Off-kilter celebrity cameos are sprinkled throughout. Aided by ample portions of slapstick, a game cast dishes out non-stop silliness that finds a way to introduce a hot-air balloon into its finale.

  And, by the way, if you try this one, forget taste. Wain and his team mount an assault on decorum along with everything else -- and there's a whole lot of everything else. 

A light and sketchy 'Karate Kid'

  Notes about Karate Kid: Legends, a movie that's much like a book you skim rather than read.

 -- Jackie Chan, who appeared in 2010's The Karate Kid, has been cast as a kung-fu master who travels from Beijing to New York City (no tariffs involved) to bolster the spirits of one of his former students. At 70, a graying Chan shows his age but still holds the screen.

-- The filmmakers found an engaging young man -- Ben Wang -- to play the lead role of Li Fong, a kid who moves to New York City because his physician mom (Ming-Na Wing) has landed a job at a New York hospital. Li is free to roam the city with one caveat: Still shaken from an earlier family loss, Mom insists that Li not fight. Not fight? Yeah, right.

-- The movie quickly provides Li with a nemesis. Enter Connor (Aramis Knight), a tough kid and winner of The Five Boroughs Karate Contest. Connor seems to possess no redeeming qualities that might blur the sharp conflict on which the movie depends.

-- Director Jonathan Entwistle provides Li Fong with a guide who's meant to introduce him to New York City. Sadie Stanley plays Mia, the daughter of the owner (Joshua Jackson) of the neighborhood pizza shop Li frequents. Teen love blooms.

-- Chan's character passes along occasional wisdom, mostly at fortune cookie levels: "Chinese say, 'Friend's problem is my problem.'"

-- Eventually, 63-year-old Ralph Machio appears. The original Karate Kid is almost eligible for Social Security, but his character, Daniel LaRusso, still has moves.

-- A subplot in which Li trains the pizza shop owner to return to the boxing ring turns the tables on the formula:  The kid becomes the mentor.

    To summarize: The filmmakers try to freshen the formula with new faces and references to previous movies, including an early shot that includes the late Pat Morita, who played Mr. Miyagi in the 1984 original and in subsequence sequels.

     I don't know whether marital arts enthusiasts will take the movie seriously. The screenplay is based on Li's need to blend his already substantial kung-fu knowledge with the rigors of karate in what's referred to as the "two branches, one tree" school.

     Speaking of schools, Li is enrolled in a New York City school which the movie mostly ignores, aside from giving him a nerdy calculus tutor (Wyatt Oleff) who provides good-natured comic relief.

     The only thought I had about any of this is that the movie seems to make thought irrelevant as it builds toward a climactic final fight on a Manhattan rooftop.

      At 94 minutes, Legends doesn't overstay its welcome, but a weak script puts too much pressure on Wang's engaging performance. As it unfolds, the movie becomes increasingly reliant on whatever affection the Karate Kid formula still generates.