Plaza delivers alongside stacked supporting cast
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A virgin plans to spend the summer before heading off to college completing every sex act possible. Oh, and it’s the 90s.
No, it’s not “American Pie.” In “The To-Do List,” Jason Biggs is nowhere to be found and the sexually ambitious protagonist is — get ready to clutch your pearls — female.
Aubrey Plaza (“Parks and Recreation,” “Safety Not Guaranteed”) plays Brandy Klark, an awkward, type-A Idaho high school valedictorian who switches her tunnel vision from school to sex after an accidental drunk encounter with guitar-strumming lifeguard Rusty Waters (Scott Porter, “Friday Night Lights”) that leaves her jarringly aware of her sexual inexperience. The next night, she opens her trusty Trapper Keeper and writes the titular list of everything from French kissing to sex — with the dreamy, blonde Rusty, of course — that she’s determined to do before heading off to Georgetown University in the fall.
The film, set in 1993, is steeped in nostalgia, from Brandy’s Clinton/Gore ‘92 mug to a spot-on Eddie Vedder joke that most millennials not raised on Pearl Jam may miss, but it doesn’t overwhelm the plot or come off as gimmicky. Early 90s Boise is simply colorful wallpaper for a script and a cast that does all the entertaining.
The cast is stacked with comedy favorites and other familiar faces. Donald Glover (“Community”) and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (“Superbad,” “Kick-Ass”) play two of Brandy’s conquests, while Alia Shawkat (“Arrested Development”) plays her best friend, a bawdy, self-professed “slut” serving as a sherpa on Brandy’s sexual journey. Also guiding Brandy is her sister Amber, an awfully highlighted and wonderfully ditzy Rachel Bilson (“The OC”), who compares Brandy’s impending freshman year to a “sexual pop quiz” in an effort to communicate “in terms a mathlete would understand.”
The true stand-out in the supporting cast is “Saturday Night Live” alum Bill Hader, husband of writer-director Maggie Carey, who plays a poncho-wearing alcoholic pool manager that develops a soft spot for Brandy, a new lifeguard who he and his employees initially torment.
What sets “The To-Do List” apart from other raunchy teen sex flicks is the fact that, to Brandy, already an unlikely female protagonist, sex is just sex. There are no emotions or strings attached to each step towards losing her virginity, just the boxes she checks off upon completion. When one would-be suitor has his advances rebuffed, he shouts through tears: “You gave me a handjob! Doesn’t that mean anything to you?” Brandy frustratedly replies, as if common sense, “No. It’s just a handjob.”
The film succeeds in accurately and hilariously depicting just how awfully awkward sexual firsts can be while simultaneously showing that sex doesn’t always have to come attached with complicated emotions, fireworks or a happily ever after ending — though, in the end, the audience and Brandy are both left satisfied.