Aubrey Plaza Film Career in Fits and Starts with The To Do List

Aubrey Plaza is one of the main reasons I have continued watching Parks and Recreation all these years. She's now making the leap to movies and it seemed like the first place I should start is The To Do List, which got fairly positive reviews.

She plays Brandy Clarke, a high-school valedictorian who is inexperienced in many ways. Based on all the things her more experienced sister and mother tell her, she creates a to-do list of sex moves to perform during the summer before college, culminating in going all the way with cheeseball hottie and lifeguard rocker Rusty Waters, played pretty hilariously by Scott Porter of Jason Street fame in TV's Friday Night Lights. Her conservative, Rush Limbaugh-leaning judge dad is also pretty funny, although nowhere near the league of Ted Knight's high-bar-setting Judge Smails in Caddyshack.

Despite the all-star cast, including Bill Hader, Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Connie Britton, and Andy Samburg, not many laughs stick, and some bits, like the Beaches song and Caddyshack poop-in-the-pool take-offs, are plain painful to watch.

Plaza's movie career is starting in fits and starts. Safety Not Guaranteed was good but not great. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World was pretty average, and I don't think I can even consider watching Life After Beth.

Get it together April Ludgate. Parks and Recreation is about to end.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

Where'd You Go, Bernadette is Only Half Fun

I thought I would love this book, having been authored by Maria Semple of Arrested Development, Saturday Night Live, and Beverly Hills 90210 writing fame.

And indeed I did voraciously suck in the first half, but the second half left me cold with a boredom-inducing adventure through the Antarctic to locate the Bernadette from the title of Where'd You Go, Bernadette.

Many pop-culture landmarks are touched upon, with Bernadette Fox having won a Genius Award in her youth before settling in as an unemployed and cynical private-school parent (or more like a friend) to daughter Bee and cold-fish wife to Microsoft fellow-genius Elgie Branch.

Elgie is on the verge of getting Bernadette institutionalized while he is half-heartedly carrying out an affair with his co-worker. But then Bernadette disappears. The novel is a decent study in family dysfunction. And the characters are fairly memorable, but they are also almost roundly unlikable.

Maria Semple

I was kind of bummed I had spent so much time with these kooks. This one is, unfortunately, no I Love You, Beth Cooper.

*** out of ***** stars

The Top 10 Jason Bateman Movies

Who would have thought that all those episodes of Little House on the Prairie, Silver Spoons, and The Hogan Family would have led to something great. But that's just the case with Jason Bateman. I'll go ahead and say it: he's my favorite comedy actor. Take a look at this slate of powerhouse laugh-a-thons:

10. The Change-Up (2011)
09. Horrible Bosses (2011)
08. The Switch (2010)
07. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
06. Couples Retreat (2009)
05. Extract (2009)
04. Up in the Air (2009)
03. Juno (2007)
02. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
01. Arrested Development (I know, it's a TV show, but it's unbeatable, and supposedly there will be a movie version someday)

What do you think?

Cedar Falls, Iowa Lures Ed Helms for an Insurance Conference

If one things can be said about Ed Helms, he plays his type well. Basically the same square-dweeb turned party animal that he played in The Hangover and The Hangover II, Helms is Tim Lippe (pronounced Lip-y) in Cedar Falls, the name of this movie and also the location of the annual insurance conference that serves as the center of the action.

This is actually a brilliant concept for a movie. An insurance conference? The comedic possibilities seem endless. And while there could have been more fall-out-of-your-seat-laughing moments, the characters are so lovable that it's impossible to not get caught up cheering for them.

Lippe has never been on an airplane before, so the run-of-the-mill chain hotel seems like a wonderland to him. This is clear from the moment he arrives and hesitates to give the desk person his credit card for incidentals to the Chevy Chase-like moment when he and the gang break into the indoor pool in the center of all the rooms in the middle of the night.

He rooms with a seemingly slimy, but actually much deeper, John C. Reilly and straight man Isiah Whitlock Jr. And he gets in all kinds of situations with a winning trifecta of ladies, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver, and Alia Shawkat (from Arrested Development).

An interesting tidbit: Iowa, where the real Cedar Rapids is located, failed to secure the film a tax credit, so the whole movie was actually done in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Although Helms' never seems funny to me in late-night talk show interviews, his winning streak with The Daily Show, The Office, The Hangovers, and this movie is a thing of beauty.

***1/2 out of ***** stars