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If our older, wiser self returned to dole out advice, would we listen? That’s the question at the heart of My Old Ass, a charmingly thoughtful film written and directed by Megan Park. Park’s angle on the universal query is notably intimate, focusing on an 18-year-old girl named Elliott Labrant (Maisy Stella) who finds herself at a crossroads. She’s on the cusp of leaving home, but during her final summer before college Elliott comes face to face with an iteration of herself at 39 (Aubrey Plaza) during a particularly intense mushroom trip in the woods near her house. The elder Elliott has a warning: stay away from a guy named Chad.
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MY OLD ASS ★★★1/2 (3.5/4 stars) |
But, of course, Elliott does meet Chad (Percy Hynes White) and begins an end-of-summer romance with him, despite potentially being queer. She continues to chat with her older self on the phone as she grapples with changes in her family and the prospect of moving away from her friends, Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks). It’s a classic coming-of-age story, with a time traveling twist that Park never over-explains. The mechanics of how Elliott visits herself years in the past are irrelevant, although ‘shrooms do feel like a plausible version of the truth. What is relevant is how Elliott handles the destabilizing forces in her life as everything seems to change at once.
Stella and Plaza have a palpable chemistry (who wouldn’t want Plaza to be their older self?), and Park allows Elliott’s dual personas to embrace a range of reactions to one another, from disbelief to curiosity to anger. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news, even if it could dispel the possibility of pain, and no one wants their choices to be directed. We have to stumble and make mistakes, Parks reminds us, because that’s what the human experience entails. If we could go and change our decisions, would it be worth it? Or did we need the pain to become who we are? There are a few predictable moments in My Old Ass, but that may be because it’s not the first story to unite two generations of oneself. In that way, it has shades of 13 Going on 30 or Big, although those are bigger, bolder stories.
Although its title suggests a wry sense of humor, My Old Ass is more poignantly bittersweet than it is seeped in hilarity. The laughs come from small, genuine moments rather than joke set-ups, and Stella is especially deft at delivering funny lines that aren’t trying too hard. There are clever glimpses of the future embedded in Park’s script, like an aside from the older Elliott about how much she misses the existence of salmon. But Park isn’t making a sci-fi film. She’s making something deeply human that allows its characters to falter and wonder and push back on their circumstances.
In the end, My Old Ass decides that age doesn’t necessarily equate to wisdom. What would we miss out on if we listened to our older self? Older Elliott knows what awaits younger Elliott and she wants to spare her, but perhaps avoidance isn’t how we live our best lives. It’s confronting the pain or the challenge or the discomfort and overcoming it that brings us into the next chapter. My Old Ass is a success because it’s so earnest, allowing these ideas to resonate with subtle humor, emotional heft and, most importantly, self-acceptance. It’s also very good encouragement to go pop a few ‘shrooms in the woods.
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Emily Zemler
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