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

Aubrey Plaza Begins a Very Promising Film Career With Safety Not Guaranteed

This is an odd little movie. It kind of fits in the rom-com category. It's kind of funny. It's kind of just plain wacky.

The wonderfully lovely Aubry Plaza (from Parks and Recreation) plays an intern at a Seattle magazine who gets the chance to help cover a story about a loner who places an ad in a newspaper seeking someone to travel back in time with him.

Safety Not Guaranteed is a minor, indie take on Back to the Future. Mark Duplass, my favorite character in the excellent show The League, plays the time traveler.

The best elements of the film include: the viewer's ability to begin loving Duplass and Plaza quite a bit in due time, some of the hysterical comedic bits like when Plaza's fellow intern nerd dons sunglasses in order to strengthen his cool factor and have a shot at getting laid, and the "terrible" song Duplass plays for Plaza one night at a campfire.

This may not seem like a must-see movie, but anyone who doesn't like sci-fi and thinks they wouldn't like the time-travel element should not shy away. The true focus here is relationships, and that's a winning formula whenever you bring in actors this good.

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

Sarah Silverman Finally Finds a Way to be As Unfunny as Possible

Sarah Silverman. Rainn Wilson. Lewis Black. Cast members of Parks and Recreation, Dexter, and The Karate Kid.

That's can't miss, right? Wrong. Peep World is the worst movie I've seen all year. It's about a young writer who becomes the voice of his generation based on his tell-all about his family. The movie reaches its wretched climax when the who family gets together for a dinner. Their unlikable father dies, which brings his unlikable, hateful, and disturbingly unfunny children together in a way that they never did when he was alive.

Ugh. Just forget you ever saw this review, and consider yourself lucky if you never waste an hour-and-a-half of your life on Peep Show.

* out of ***** stars