“The To Do List”
Directed by Maggie Carrey
Starring Aubrey Plaza, Bill Hader, Johnny Simmons, Alia Shawkat, Sarah Steele, Scott Porter, Rachel Bilson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Andy Samberg, Donald Glover, Connie Britton, Clark Gregg
Comedy, Romance
104 Mins
R

A little slow on the upkeep, The To-Do List is Aubrey Plaza and Maggie Carey‘s answer to the strain of 90s comedies probing sexual exploration. This time around, the placeholders are flipped on their heads, as this enterprise of intimacy is from the perspective of a real, live 21st century woman.

Subverting the framework by having the female protagonist on the hunt for man-bod (rather than the boilerplate convention of bumbling dudes trying to shake off their v-cards) frames the film in a new kind of light – a post-sexual, pro-Planned Parenthood brand of soft light that gently makes you look better than you are. Going so far as to demarcate it as a feminist effort though feels juvenile and a distinction that only the most staunch of conservatives would bother discerning. There just isn’t that sort of agenda at play here. It’s meant for simpleton, oafish fun and in that regard and that regard alone, it works.  Plaza and Carrey do run aground issues, and let their film flop flaccid, when they expect us to acknowledge this familiar mold for something that it’s not: fresh.

 

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As an awkward parable on the confusion of first sexual experiences, The To-Do List is gross, crude, and often funny, but very much derived from past efforts. From behind the two-way mirror, this is, no doubt, the girl’s version of American Pie. Hunting for clues of sexual transcendence, working her way up the pyramid of carnal deeds, Plaza’s Brandy is essentially an amalgamate of Jason Bigg‘s painfully hapless Jim Levenstein mixed with a hormone-enraged Napoleon Dynamite. Brandy’s deadpan delivery and chronic poor timing are obvious derivations of these past comedy behemoths, but she’s also stirring over with the same crude, monotonous angst and strange sexuality that constitutes her character April Ludgate on Parks and Recreations.

While April is an underachiever by nature, Brandy is a top-of-the-charts perfectionist. As a self-described girl who needs no introduction, Brandy’s academic aspirations have stood in the way of her social standings, evident by the fact that even the principal helps to whisk her offstage in the midst of her Valedictorian speech. With the pressures of high school cooling and a pre-college summer to boot, this cumming-of-age story takes aim at Brandy’s unexplored nether-regions. Terminally a planner, Brandy presumes the road to sexual success is a carefully coordinated ladder of erotic conquests, which she labels: the to-do list – hence the title.

 

Much of the comic gold is buried in Plaza’s distant sexuality and her view of intercourse as homework. In sum, it’s girls gone mild. Her butterfingered advances are painful at times with a repeating gag of her freeze-framed sexual “triumphs” serving as the comedic apex of the film. It doesn’t hurt that Plaza is surrounded by seasoned comics like Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse but a straight-laced Clark Gregg, as Brandy’s conservative father, scores the biggest laughs.

Hader is on a welcomed autopilot as Brandy’s bemused boss (a pool manager who can’t swim) just as Samberg works well in his hastily laid character bit as a small-town, narcissistic rocker. Mintz-Plasse continues to work his slightly lisping, majorly out-of-touch, pre-hipster clown as Scott Porter fills the square box of the Goldilocks, hot dude who is apt to pop his shirt off. Alia Shawkat of Arrested Development is a disappointment as the loose but lovable best friend while partner in crime Wendy (Sarah Steele) represents the reason why we thought girls had cooties in the first place. All of the high school stereotypes are there in broad, familiar sketches – hackneyed characters picked from a buffet of other comedies. 

Like most so-called “funny” movies, when the laughs do stop coming – particularly in the emotionally stalled, third-act woes – the film goes limp. In spite of these droopy moments, the shot-callers have managed an acceptable ratio of funny bits to keep us from pulling out too soon.

Even though it’s dressed in a modge-podge of genre clichés, the breezy 90s settings, and the jokes derived from the inimitable hallmarks of that generation, gives enough life to hum happily along with. Continuing to blaze the trail of the strong female-lead comedy, this first time writer-director seems to waltz around all the bases too easily, knowing where to mine for laughs but leaving the rest a mess. In a way, she flaunts her virgin status rather than wrapping it up in plastic. The plot jumps and writing are as bumbling as Plaza’s lead character but you can tell that Carey has had these jokes bouncing around in her brain for a while until she finally just had to pop.

Penis jokes aside, you can’t shake the feeling that this is indie comedy d’jour – a palatable, if forgettable, entry to that erectly popular, sex-ed genre. Before romping around in the sheets with Plaza and Co., be sure to note that this is a shower, not a grower. Still its little-engine-that-could personality might manage to break free of the restrictive wrapper around it. And with Plaza at the lead, Brandy’s frigid procedural approach to romance makes this sex-as-math comedic soaked in backdoor sniggers.

C+