The To Do List

So I walked into a movie theater the other day, with little to no concern about my near future.  I purchased the ticket with ease, sat down in my assigned seat with ease, even breathed a sigh of relief to the notion that for the next 100 or so minutes I would have nothing to worry about besides trying to keep myself dry during the hysterical laughter I fully expected to ensue from the films start to finish.  Peace.  Let me tell you something reader, when it came down to it, The To Do List turned out to be the exact opposite of my naive expectations; the antithesis. 


Let me paint a little picture for you here folks, for starters I will need you to:
1. Jump into your Deloreon time machines.
2. Blast some Huey Lewis & The News.
3. Punch that accelerator until your speed pushes 88 mph (140 something kph for those of you loyal readers living with the metric system).
4. Hope/pray your Mr. Fusion is fully supplied.
5. Hold on to your butts.

 6. Don't' sue me for copy-right infringement.

Now, when you arrive and open your eyes, you will find yourself in the wonderfully beautiful year of 1993...disappointed?  Shouldn't be.  This is the marvelous decade/era/year we find ourselves reliving throughout The To Do List.  I'm talking Trapper Keepers, scrunchies, clear see-through telephones, and pagers!  Ah...the good ole days.  For those of you who don't know, this film is all about a very straight arrow girl named Brandy Klark, played by comedian Aubrey Plaza.  We follow Brandy as she graduates high school, starts a new summer job as a lifeguard and is preparing for her first year at Georgetown. The premise behind this film, is that little miss goody two shoes Brandy has realized that she is not as "well rounded" as she once thought when she realizes that she has missed out big time in High School.  While Brandy was getting straight A's in everything, her peers were busy learning "extra-curricular" activities of sorts.  Brandy decides to make a before college "To Do List" determined to tackle these new experiences just as she did school subjects.  This turns out to be an aggressive full-frontal assault on all the bases, and by bases I mean the sexual bases.  She wants to go from kissing all the way to sex, stopping everywhere inbetween.  Since I am trying to maintain a "family-friendly...ish" readership, I will leave the details out.  Needless to say, some of these things are normal and some are downright freaky.  So we follow Brandy as she moves from guy to guy in a nonchalant manner, crossing her conquests off of her written list as she goes.  We, I hate to say, are privy to quite a lot of visuals and awkward scenes, not to mention extremely vulgar language regarding these acts as well as some unnecessary "special effects"; I may never be able to eat an eclair again.   

 Leave me be you devil pastry!

Now, as above mentioned, this film struck me as the type in which I would never recover from the laugh pains, however, much of this film was delivered awkwardly instead of comically, leaving me searching for the punchline.  The To Do List had a very flat/one-dimensional story line where the plot never really got going and the comedy revolved really around one gag from start to finish: sexually awkward inexperience.  There wasn't much delineation from that.  Sure, there were a hand full, at most, of times where I found myself chuckling and laughing, but mostly I noticed I was shaking my head and frowning.  I'm not sitting here saying I'm a prude by any means, however, much of this film was too much, and at the same time, not enough.  The gags and situations that ended up being funny, seemed short-lived; not given enough pacing.  The gags and situation which were gross and unnecessary, on the other hand, were too much and lasted far too long.  All in all, not a good production.

I blame some of this on the fact that The To Do List was written and directed by the same person, Maggie Carey.  Looking over Ms. Carey's IMDB page I notice a common theme for most of her projects: she does the combo write and direct quite often.  Sometimes this can be pulled off without a hitch, however, I notice that a lot of the times when you have the same person occupying two highly important and creative positions, you end up with an issue.  When you have one person in these positions, no one is challenging the other, instead what the Writer wants the Director gets.  So we the viewer find ourselves seeing scenes which should have never made it off the cutting room floor, or characters with inappropriate motivation.  Either way, it has the potential for being disastrous, and in this case did.

Final Words: zzzzzzzz.
The To Do List was one of those films where you either find yourself in hysterics or you find yourself dissatisfied.  Between the vulgarity in language and the scenes is a character you really can't get to far behind because she was so flat, same with the story-line.  This film offered up a romp of a comedy, but instead fizzled before it could get off the ground.  Sad day to have to relive the 90's in such an unflattering way.

Until next time, happy viewing!

Review Rating based on popcorn sizes: small, medium, large, extra-large; 

films worth skipping get snore...zzzzz