Title: My Old Ass
Describe This Movie In One Flying Saucer Tour, Vol. 3 Quote:
BILL HICKS: I’m glad mushrooms are against the law, because I took them one time, and you know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours going, “My God! I love everything!”
Brief Plot Synopsis: Days of Future Plaza
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 Sir Mix-A-Lots out of 5.
Tagline: “What would you ask your older self?”
Better Tagline: “How did I survive my 20s?”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Elliot (Maisy Stella) is enjoying one last summer before going off to college. She and her family live on Lake Muskoka, Ontario, where they run a cranberry farm. She and her two best friends decide to go camping and take mushrooms, like you do, but while her chums have fairly benign experiences, Elliot is visited by an older version of herself. Older Elliot (Aubrey Plaza) is vague about the future, but adamant about one thing: stay away from guys named Chad. This proves easier said than done, especially when the new summer worker (Percy Hynes White) shows up.
“Critical” Analysis: It’s something not a few of us have thought about: what would I want to know if I ran into older me? Eighteen-year old Pete’s first question to his elder form might be, “When did we start going gray?” First, you don’t want to know (freshman year of college). Second — regarding other, more impactful questions — maybe you *really* don’t want to know.
Elliot the Older won’t tell young her *why* to avoid Chad, which becomes problematic when teen Elliot, who’s just assumed she’s gay, realizes Chad is actually a hell of a guy.
It feels a bit like false advertising when the promo materials for a movie prominently feature an actor (Plaza) with *maybe* 20 minutes of actual screen time. And maybe I’d care more, but Stella is just plain good. A teenager played by an (almost) teen, Elliot is awkward and indignant in that way peculiar to 18-year olds (“everyone at that age is kind of an asshole,” Plaza states).
But the Nashville actor is capable of a much broader range, from haltingly assertive to achingly despondent. She also proves her older self’s point about her generation, making no inquiries about future Elliot’s . . . future. Then again, when you’re confused and struggling with feelings for a boy a possible hallucination explicitly told you to stay away from, you can be forgiven for not connecting all the dots.
The threat of inevitable adolescent sadness is somewhat offset by the vaguely apocalyptic pronouncements from Older Elliot (over a phone, don’t ask me how science works), with throwaway comments about how no one is allowed to have three children or the peal of air raid sirens. It’s small wonder she wants to visit her somewhat idyllic past.
As with many recent coming of age stories, My Old Ass doesn’t pull any punches. Like Eighth Grade and Edge of Seventeen before it, writer director Megan Park knows how to tap into the ambivalence and full-throated embrace of emotional extremes so peculiar to adolescence.
And there are some funny throwaway gags that don’t get a follow-up, like Elliot’s little brother’s infatuation with Saoirse Ronan. The Justin Bieber hallucination sequence is pretty fun.
There’s an Arrival-esque sense of inevitability to how the third act plays out. It’s sad, but not overwhelmingly so, and stays true to Park’s message: that seemingly trivial events can carry weight so immense we didn’t realize it.
Also, I checked the mileage from Lake Muskoka to Toronto, where Elliott is going to university; it’s two hours away. I thought for sure with all this garment rending she was going to school in France or something. Fine, going off to school a big life change, but I think the amount of dread you’re allowed prior to leaving for college should be abbreviated if you can drive home every weekend.
My Old Ass is in theaters today.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
