I wasn’t expecting a meaningful cinematic experience from a movie entitled My Old Ass, but this high-concept comedy that turns into a teen weeper came out as just that. Just last week we saw The Substance make science-fiction horror out of a person encountering their younger self, and this movie takes the same idea and makes something much gentler and funnier out of it.
Three weeks before she’s slated to leave her tiny Ontario village for the University of Toronto, Elliott (Maisy Stella) celebrates her 18th birthday by taking magic mushrooms in the woods with her best friends (Kerrice Brooks and Maddie Ziegler). Just as she’s wondering why she’s feeling no effects while her friends are tripping balls, Elliott’s 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) materializes beside her. Once Elliott accepts that this older woman is a future version of her, she’s full of questions about her life to come, but older Elliott won’t tell her much besides not to get involved with anyone named Chad. This seems unlikely because Elliott is a lesbian, and a highly sexed one at that, but then her parents hire a Chad (Percy Hynes White) to help on their cranberry farm for the summer, and he’s so nice that Elliott starts questioning whether she’s as gay as she previously thought. What freaks her out more is that older Elliott keeps calling her even after she comes down from the shrooms.
This is Megan Park’s follow-up to her sterling debut feature The Fallout. She cuts humor into what could be a soppy story, and more importantly, the humor works. Much of this is due to Plaza, as older Elliott shows her younger self the missing toe on her right foot before recalling “Oh wait, that hasn’t happened yet” and repeatedly insists that a 39-year-old person is not middle-aged. (Plaza just turned 40 and Park is coming up on it, and all I can say is: I can relate, ladies.) Maybe the aesthetics at work here are the same as you’d find on a comfy-as-an-old-shoe show like Virgin River, but Park keeps it from becoming dull by going weird, as when Elliott’s youngest brother (Carter Trozzolo) jumps the gun on claiming her bedroom and plasters an entire wall with pictures of his favorite actress, Saoirse Ronan. Elliott says, “I’m not sleeping in here with her staring at me.”
The find here is Stella, the younger sister to singer Lennon Stella who acted on TV’s Nashville for some years. She captures young Elliott’s foul-mouthed, chaotic energy — she’s intrigued by the possibilities of having sex with her future self, though sadly, older Elliott vetoes the idea — but also knows when to be still, as when Elliott tells Chad that she is gay. One set piece has young Elliott trying to re-establish contact with her older self by taking shrooms again, but instead she only imagines herself as Justin Bieber singing “One Less Lonely Girl.” (Hey, it could have been worse. Had she imagined herself as Drake, that would have been bad on a number of levels.)
The unexpected stinger in My Old Ass comes near the end when older Elliott tells her younger self the tragic turn that their life is going to take. The performances by the two lead actresses give the movie its emotional and philosophical heft as the younger Elliott vows that she’d rather have her heart mangled than live without anything happening, and Plaza once again shows her ability to reveal layers of hurt underneath all the vocal fry. It all adds up to one of the season’s bigger surprises. Take note everyone: This is what these movies look like when they’re good.
My Old Ass
Starring Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza. Written and directed by Megan Park. Rated R.
