With her supporting roles in things like Funny People and Parks and Recreation, Aubrey Plaza turned a lot of heads as a character actor who could play a mean, deadpan slacker. If that was the limits of her talents, she still could have probably built herself a lengthy career based on showing up in things, doing her thing, and then going home early. But, with her featured role in last year’s Safety Not Guaranteed, she proved that she’s also a versatile actress who’s perfectly capable of shouldering the weight of a featured role. That’s why I was excited to see what she has to offer in her first truly starring role here, in first time feature director Maggie Carey’s The To Do List.
The basic story is that Plaza is playing Brandy, an uptight overachiever who’s graduating from high school as the valedictorian, but still a virgin, and feeling like human sexuality is the one subject that she’s failed to learn enough about. Motivated to fix this oversight before she starts college, she does what every overachieving stick in the mud would do—she makes an exhaustive list of all the sexual acts she needs to engage in before she can comfortably consider herself to be an expert. In addition to that goal, she’s also got a dreamboat crush (Scott Porter), a couple of quirky best friends (Alia Shawkat and Sarah Steele), a put-upon admirer (Johnny Simmons), a slacker boss (Bill Hader), an overprotective dad (Clark Gregg), an oversharing mother (Connie Britton), and a ditzy sister (Rachel Bilson). That’s a quirky, impressive group of actors, but unfortunately their talents are being utilized to make a film that doesn’t prove to be anything more than a slightly above average teen sex comedy.
So, given that bold claim, why isn’t The To Do List as funny as it could have been? First off, instead of leaning on its cast’s performances and going for the sort of character-based humor that resonates most deeply, too often it goes for gags that are just too cheap and easy (AKA poop jokes). The story is set in the early 90s, for seemingly no reason other than that allows its characters to dress in goofy outfits and reference outdated technology. There’s really no punchline there other than, “remember the 90s?,” so the film ends up falling into the same trap that Hot Tub Time Machine did, where the setting overpowers the storytelling. The film also just doesn’t go as far as it could when it comes to pushing the envelope. It has an R rating, it markets itself as a raunchy sex comedy, and yet it’s still the type of movie where everyone has sex with their bottom half hidden under covers and their bras on. If you’re going to make a movie that’s about a checklist of sex acts getting knocked off, probably you have carte blanche to get quite a bit more shocking than this saccharine coming of age story does. That being said, “You had me at eating pussy,” may be the line of the year so far.
Really, these are just quibbles though. The To Do List actually does manage to be pretty funny—but funny when compared to other teen sex comedies, not funny when compared to the best comedies out there. If it has any real problem, it’s one of expectations. This cast is just so deep and so talented that you can’t help but go into the movie thinking that you’re about to see something special, and then everyone but Plaza gets wasted. Hader is one of the most unique comic personalities in the business right now, but here he’s just playing a generic slacker character that anyone could have pulled off. Gregg, through his work with Joss Whedon, has proven himself to be one of the most charming actors on the planet, but here he’s just playing the same overprotective dad character who shows up in every single teen sex comedy ever. Donald Glover has maybe the best delivery in comedy, but he only shows up in this thing for a few seconds here and there. Shawkat, much like Plaza, is a genius at delivering offensive lines with a nihilist flair, but here she’s stuck playing the cooky friend who wears a hat. You get the point.
The fact that Plaza doesn’t get wasted in the lead role ends up being the film’s saving grace. She’s really funny here, and she’s really funny while playing a three-dimensional, complicated character. You probably don’t necessarily relate to Brandy, but Plaza imbues her with enough humanity that you can at least get behind her scheme. This isn’t like any character that Plaza has played yet, and like she did in Safety Not Guaranteed, she once again proves that she’s got a much bigger range as an actress than everyone initially imagined she would. Though this isn’t the most advanced or most interesting material, the chance to take in Plaza fully embracing her character and elevating everything around her makes it well worth watching, and it’s likely going to help win her more roles in the near future.
Just one more quibble before we go. One of The To Do List’s big positives is that, though you think you can see the end point it’s heading toward coming a mile away, it actually finds a more effective, more satisfying, and more smart place to ends things than you were expecting. The moment involves the movie Beaches. The only problem is, instead of actually ending on this moment like it feels like it’s going to, the film ends up going on and stacking on about another ten minutes of resolution. Not only does this ruin the pacing a bit, because it feels like the action has already climaxed, but it also ends up closing things on a note that feels much more generic and expected than the previous one. Once again, this isn’t a gigantic problem, but it leaves you walking out of the theater with a bad taste in your mouth instead of a good one. The To Do List is a perfectly fine movie to spend a couple of hours watching, just don’t go into it expecting anything special.
