Review: "The To Do List"

I wish Aubrey Plaza had made this movie a few years ago when she was just starting out as the acerbic April on TV's "Parks and Recreation." It's a classic transitionary role perfect for a new star, playing a high school goody-goody on a mission to lose her virginity before college.

When you're 23 or 24 playing 17 or 18 is a stretch, but still doable. Plaza is 29, so when they put her in the right clothes and makeup she looks exactly like ... someone pushing 30 playing a teen.
I also wish "The To Do List" was just plain better than it is.

It's part of the chicks-can-do-raunch-too movement, of which I am fully supportive. Comediennes have grown tired of their male counterparts eating up all the sex-and-cursing bandwidth, and have launched their own front with "Bridesmaids" and the like.

Written and directed by Maggie Carey, "List" certainly doesn't shy away from the dirty talk, though depictions of sex acts are more coy than flagrant.

The setup is that class of '93 valedictorian Brandy Klark is a total grind who's deliberately ignorant of even the basics of sex. Sister Amber (Rachel Bilson) is a party girl and her parents (Clark Gregg and Connie Britton) are pretty buttoned up, so she determines to achieve her deflowering before summer's end, as sort of a rite-of-passage meets science project.

Brandy being the methodical brainy sort, she researches sex acts and makes a comprehensive list of everything she wants to do. We've seen gosh knows how many sex comedies in which young lads determine to lose their cherry. But Brandy's list looks more like the chapter titles on a porn DVD.

She even has her sights set on the ultimate prize: going all the way with Rusty Waters (Scott Porter), a dude-ish older guy who works at the same pool where she does during the summer. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is Cameron (Johnny Simmons), a nerdy classmate and longtime pal who'd like to be more than the warm-up act for Rusty.

Bill Hader plays Willy, the slacker pool manager who's both her boss and chief teaser; Andy Samberg is a rocker and potential checkmark on Brandy's list; Donald Glover and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play hangers-on and hopefuls.

The primary other relationships in the story are with Brandy's best buds, Wendy (Sarah Steele) and Fiona (Alia Shawkat). I liked the foul-mouthed repartee between the trio, which combines hardcore sex talk with a certain sweetness. They all call each other "Pancake" while discussing the intimate details of their sexual encounters.

The main problem with "The To Do List" is that it's structured like a series of skits rather than a cohesive narrative. The characters are merely props for the jokes. Plaza tries hard to find the neurotic center of Brandy, but it's tough when the script calls for her to be brazen one minute and a wallflower the next.

There are some individually funny scenes and throwaway jokes -- make sure to check out the graffiti that gets sprayed all over the pool house by a rival gang. And there's one instant classic bit where Plaza pulls off a water joke that's ... well, let's just call it a reverse "Caddyshack."

I think Aubrey Plaza has serious potential as a comedic lead actress, but this movie feels like a stumble. If you want to see her in something infinitely more clever and less bawdy, check out last year's "Safety Not Guaranteed." That little-seen gem should be on everyone's to-do list.

Video review: "Please Give"

Kate, a thriving New York City businesswoman, offers a man her dinner leftovers, plaintively asking if he is hungry. He is late middle age, African-American, and his clothes have seen better days.

The beatific expression of pity on Kate's face is shattered when the man nods toward the swank restaurant in front of him. "I'm waiting for a table," he says haughtily.

This delicious scene represents the essence of "Please Give," a black comedy from writer/director Nicole Holofcener about how sometimes even charity is selfish.

Kate, well-played by Catherine Keener, is hooked on pity. She doles out $20 bills to the homeless, but won't buy her teen daughter the expensive pair of jeans she's dying for. Kate volunteers at a nursing home, but is asked to leave after a few hours because her fretful concern for the aged residents brings them down.

She and husband Alex (a spot-on Oliver Platt) run a business selling vintage furniture they bought off the bereaved offspring of the recently dead, who didn't know what they had. Perhaps Kate's runaway giving is an unconscious offset for their outrageous markups.

Their next-door neighbor is 91-year-old Andra, whose space Kate and Alex will take over whenever she kicks off. Andra has two granddaughters: Rebecca and Mary (Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet, respectively) who are mirror images of altruism. Rebecca gives so much of herself there isn't much left for a real life, while Mary is following in Andra's nasty, self-centered footsteps.

"Please Give" is filled with delightful performances, but I found it hard to connect with any of the characters. The film's deeper theme seems to be about how people can be generous on the one hand and cutthroat on the other.

For Kate, everything's a competition -- even who can be the nicest to the less fortunate.

Video goodies are not so good.

The extras are rather minimal. There's a roundup of outtakes from production, a behind-the-scenes tour on the set, and clips from a Q&A with Holofcener.

Anyone else see the irony of a movie called "Please Give" being released with measly set of bonus features?

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 1.5 stars

Review: "Please Give"

The people we meet in "Please Give" are almost uniformly unpleasant in some way or another. But they hide their meanness behind a veneer of beneficence that is so dear to them, they actually believe they're nice.

Take Kate, more or less the main character, played by Catherine Keener. She's middle-aged, successful, with a husband and teen daughter. Kate literally cannot pass a homeless person on the Manhattan street without giving them money -- her need to be generous is so consuming that on occasion she mistakenly offers cash to regular people minding their own business.

See, Kate is not attached so much to giving as the feeling of superiority she derives from helping total strangers. For her, pity is a like a drug.

Perhaps it's the guilt she feels from the business in which she and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt) are partners. They buy old furniture from the children of old people who have died, and then resell it at a considerable markup as vintage treasures.

They're essentially upscale ambulance chasers, cheating the bereaved who don't know what they've got.

In fact, Alex and Kate have bought the apartment next door to theirs from Andra (Ann Morgan Guilbert), a sour-pussed 91-year-old, with the intention of knocking through the walls to expand whenever the old lady kicks off. They act nice to Andra, offering to make trips to the drugstore for her. But everyone, including Andra, knows they're just counting the days until they can finally have their master suite.

Andra's granddaughters are Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and Mary (Amanda Peet), who live together in quiet conflict. Mary is a cosmetologist who doesn't believe in hiding her antipathy toward her grandmother, who has the elderly habit of saying incredibly hateful or racist things.

Andra may indeed be a nasty old bitch, but Mary has a few decades' head start.

Rebecca, on the other hand, is sweet to her core, even if she's a bit distant to those around her. Rebecca works as a radiology assistant, spending her days squishing women's boobs into the scanning machine. She shares such intimacy with her patients, Rebecca finds little zeal for it in her own life.

Kate and Alex have a 15-year-old daughter, Abby (Sarah Steele), an awkward kid with a terrible acne problem and a lust for a $235 pair of jeans. Kate's generosity to strangers is galling to Abby, who at one point snatches a $20 bill out of a homeless man's hand, furious that her mother is more giving to a street person than her own daughter.

"Please Give" is written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, who's previously made three other movies with Keener, including "Lovely & Amazing" and "Friends with Money." Like her other works, it's a highly personal film about women and their relationships, their flaws and complexities.

I was thoroughly engaged the entire time I spent with this terrific cast, who deliver sensitive and brave performances. But I kept feeling the movie pushing me away, as if I did not belong inside the circle of people I was observing.

It's hard to say exactly what the film is about. There's an exploration of the New York City mindset, in which people seem to be in a constant, unspoken competition with each other, scrapping for the biggest apartment with the nicest things in it -- and not necessarily even things they like, just stuff that other people will think is nice.

Mostly, though, the unstated theme touches on how even when people offer a hand to others, they're sometimes still being selfish. I just wish "Please Give" could have been a little more generous with itself.

2.5 stars out of four