The To Do List Information

The To Do List is a 2013 American romantic comedy film, released on July 26, 2013. Written and directed by Maggie Carey in her feature film directorial debut, the film stars Aubrey Plaza, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Rachel Bilson. The film is about a high school senior (Plaza), who feels she needs to have more sexual experiences before she starts college.

Plot

In Boise, Idaho in the summer of 1993, Brandi Klark is an overachieving, high school valedictorian who is socially awkward and the complete opposite of her older sister, Amber, who makes fun of her for being a virgin. After her two best friends, Wendy and Fiona, take her to a party and she gets drunk for the first time, she mentions she almost had sex with a college boy named Rusty Waters, but she didn't know how to go about doing it so he backed off. At this point she decided she was going to learn all about sex over the summer and go on a quest to have sex with Rusty.

Rusty works as a lifeguard at the local pool, where Brandy gets hired to as well, along with her "study-buddy" Cameron Mitchell. While there, as the newbie, she is hazed quite a bit by her slacker boss, Willy, and her other coworkers, and given unpleasant jobs including fishing a turd out of the pool. Based on the Baby Ruth joke from the film Caddyshack she is confident it is only a candy bar, and picks up the turd and takes a bite ? only to find out it was a real turd. As the day ends, she is forced to clean both locker rooms, then she pushes Willy into the pool for revenge and finds out he can't swim, so she agrees to teach him if he knocks off the hazing, which he does.

She gets advice from her sister and her mother about sex (a topic her father, a judge and devout conservative, stays away from), and makes a list of sexual acts to learn about and perform, which she goes about doing as the summer progresses. Due to a mix-up in relayed messages, Cameron comes over to go out on a date with Brandy, and is told to wait for her in her room, where he discovers her list, and is very upset he was part of her "mission". Meanwhile, Willy catches Brandy, Wendy, Fiona, and a band fronted by Van messing around in the pool after-hours, initially after catching Brandy going down on Van in the showers. When she gets home, she is confronted by Cameron over the list, and he is very upset with her over it and refuses to talk to her again.

Brandy gets even closer to Rusty during an incident where they go get revenge on a more upscale pool for vandalizing their pool, but it leads to Willy being forced to fire Brandy.

Later, when Wendy and Fiona come over so they can all watch Beaches, they see Brandy's list and see who she experimented with, and get upset with her for going after their exes behind their backs, then they leave, taking Brandy's VCR with them when the tape gets stuck.

Brandy finally calls and asks out Rusty, and they drive in his Volkswagen Vanagon to a popular make-out spot to get it on. Brandy insists on being on top, and after less than a minute Rusty climaxes, kind of bumming out Brandy, but then she looks up and sees her father in the Dodge Caravan next to them, apparently having sex with her mom on a special night, and demands Rusty take her home, while he still thinks it's the sex.

Willy goes to the Klark house to warn Brandy about something and is met at the door by Amber, who immediately seduces him.

When Rusty gets Brandy home, Cameron is there to meet him with a sucker-punch, and they scuffle until Rusty easily pins Cameron, but eventually Brandy confronts both of them and calls each one out on their good qualities, then apologizes sincerely to Cameron for what she did and offers her own view of sex after all she went through.

Then afterwards, she goes to seek out Wendy and Fiona to apologize to them. She comes into Wendy's house singing Wind Beneath My Wings, which Wendy joins in on, then Fiona somewhat reluctantly joins in and they all finish together and embrace, all back together again as friends. Then finally she meets up with Willy at the pool again and he offers her his job if she comes back next summer as he has decided to quit and chase the Grateful Dead before Jerry Garcia dies.

Brandy and Cameron meet again at Georgetown University where both are studying. Cameron confesses he had sex once sometime after the whole to do list with an unnamed girl and Brandy. Then the next scene has him carrying her back to a dorm room making out and they have sex in every way.

Cast

• Aubrey Plaza as Brandy Klark
• Johnny Simmons as Cameron Mitchell
• Bill Hader as Willy
• Scott Porter as Rusty
• Alia Shawkat as Fiona
• Rachel Bilson as Amber Klark
• Christopher Mintz-Plasse as Duffy
• Andy Samberg as Van
• Connie Britton as Jean Klark
• Clark Gregg as Judge George Klark
• Donald Glover as Derrick
• Sarah Steele as Wendy
• Adam Pally as Chip
• Jack McBrayer as Hillcrest Pool manager

Production

The script was originally entitled The Handjob. The film was rejected by studios, but ended up on the "blacklist" of most popular unpublished scripts of 2010. A live table reading of the script at the Austin Film Festival led CBS Films to produce the project.

Reception

Prior to release, the film received mixed reviews, holding a 55% rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 81 reviews.

Plaza's role as Brandy Klark was praised by film critic Alan Scherstuhl, who writes for The Village Voice, that "unlike for the female characters in previous sex comedies, sex for her is a straight-up choice, something she offers or refuses according to no agenda but her own," but notes that "there's something dispiriting about [the film's] junky look, indifferent pacing, and sketch-comedy characterization."

On a more critical front, Rafer Guzman of Newsday gave the film one out of four stars, calling it "a fake feminist comedy that pays lip service to female empowerment but inadvertently makes sex seem both demeaning and meaningless," as well as "Vulgar, cynical and rarely funny." Paul Doro of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel' criticized the film for its extreme raunchiness, which he found to be unneeded; he named the film "an absurdly profane comedy that spends its entire time serving up filthy jokes and then trying to top them".

Box office

During the film's opening weekend, The To Do List earned $1,579,402 from 591 theaters, opening in fifteenth place. This was below expectations, the Los Angeles Times predicted an opening weekend of $2"3 million, and CBS Films was expecting $2 million.