Women must be reluctant to make sex comedies since the double standard makes it an impossible sell. Look at The Sweetest Thing. I mean, maybe it made you laugh, maybe it didn’t, but you didn’t have to treat it like the antichrist for women trying to be as dirty as their contemporary guy counterparts. I admire The To Do List just for braving these waters (an appropriate pun since a pool plays a major role in the movie), but it’s also damn good.
Brandy Clark (Aubrey Plaza) is the valedictorian of the high school class of 1993, but she’s a virgin. She decides to spend the summer before college learning all about sexual activity, but “Type A” style, she makes a formal checklist of acts she needs to perform. It’s an Easy A that goes all the way, and that’s no knock on Easy A. That was a smart teen comedy about suggestion and innuendo. There’s also a funny comedy to make about really exploring teen sex, but it’s a pretty difficult thing to pull off if you think about it.
Are we rooting for her to forsake her responsible, studied values because life experience is important too? Are we rooting for her to learn a valuable lesson from becoming promiscuous, which presupposes that exploring one’s sexuality is wrong? The To Do List solves both problems. Brandy has an innocent perspective about exploring all the sex she’s only heard about, so it really is life experience, and she remains responsible. She also learns a bit about the emotional component of sex, which is something her objective plan left out, but it’s in the interest of enriching her experience, not condemning it. Also the jokes are funny.
There is a bit of a ‘90s nostalgia aspect to the movie, including an inordinate amount of “Growing Pains” jokes, and a “Home Improvement” shout-out. A date to see Hard Target sets the bulk of this movie in August of 1993 if we’re being accurate, but it had to be set in the early ‘90s. You see, Brandy is trying to learn about all the components of sexual relationships, and if there had been the internet, she would have just looked everything up and there’d be no comedy. It had to be pre-internet so she’d be inclined to experience things herself.
The supporting characters give Brandy a rich world in which to perform her checklist, so it’s not just sex jokes. Her world is populated by archetypes that provide reactions to Brandy’s clinical approach to sex, and mingle to create humor in between the sex scenes. Cameron (Johnny Simmons) is the nice guy with whom Brandy begins the list. Duffy (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is his horndog friend who eggs him on. Her sister Amber (Rachel Bilson) is the opposite end of the spectrum, a very promiscuous girl who’s now planning a superficial wedding, full of regrets. Her parents (Clark Gregg and Connie Britton) are both clueless and inappropriate. Her best friends (Alia Shawkat and Sarah Steele) are experienced and naive respectively, so they’re more than just sounding boards. Spoiler alert for Beaches though, because they watch the end of that movie at a sleepover.
Brandy has a summer job at a swimming pool that has the atmosphere of an ‘80s subculture comedy. The fellow lifeguards and her boss (Bill Hader) are a community of outcasts, but together they belong. A random rivalry comes out of nowhere, but whatever. The reveal of who the rival at Oak Crest pool is makes it worth it. Plus, ‘80s movies were pretty random too, so it’s the kind of movie where maybe the most memorable lines are offshoots of subplots, rather than the main premise. Basically, Bill Hader being Bill Hader is enough reason to have this subplot.
Besides the naughty jokes and the wacky characters, The To Do List has something to say, in an effective way. Brandy learns that high school guys do get attached. Hell, 30-year-old guys get attached to women who share something physical with them, but the point is boys are sensitive. It’s really nice to see a raunchy comedy acknowledge that, without making the women heartless at the same time. An even more poignant message, which is a bit subtler so maybe you didn’t catch it, is that everyone judges you no matter what. If you’re too chaste and studious they judge you, if you’re promiscuous they judge you, so really don’t be judging, people.
I loved The To Do List. It just made me so happy to see a movie embrace the humor of sexuality, and manage to not overdo it on the gross outs either, though just about every bodily fluid does show up at one point. The timing all around is sublime, with a fast paced approach to keep up with current comedy rhythms. Maybe they should call it The Ta Da List because when it works, it’s like, “Ta Da! We did it!”
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
