MY OLD ASS - Mark Reviews Movies

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2024

Counting down the days until leaving for college and starting life in earnest, Elliott (Maisy Stella) just wants to enjoy the time she has left in the little lakeside town where she has lived her entire life. That includes hanging out with her best friends, making out with the barista she has had a crush on for a while, and driving her boat around the lake before selling it. It's everything one would expect of someone in Elliott's position, but then, writer/director Megan Park's My Old Ass reveals a weird but surprisingly poignant premise for this coming-of-age tale.

That arrives early into the story, as Elliott and her two best friends, Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler), decide to celebrate her 18th birthday by camping in the woods, brewing up some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and, hopefully, pleasantly tripping away the rest of the night. Sure, this means Elliott is missing the birthday meal and cake her family has prepared for her at the family's cranberry farm. What college-bound teen, though, really wants to spend these precious days with the people who have always been there and, in that youthful mindset when things like family represent a constant in life, always will be there?

Park's screenplay is wise in seeing that worldview in Elliott, and the film itself is at its most potent when it lives up to that and other kinds of wisdom about aging, the passage of time, and what really matters in life. It's a funny film, for sure, as Elliott navigates a new perspective on her life, her relationships, and her future by way of a wholly unlikely source, but honestly, the setup and Park's sincerity in confronting those ideas head on are too good, too honest, and too affecting to be spent on easy comedy.

That's enough teasing, though. The premise here has Elliott, quite high on those mushrooms, suddenly looking face-to-face with her 39-year-old self. The older Elliott is played by Aubrey Plaza, who doesn't appear much in the film but certainly makes such an impact that we're instantly sold on the conceit (while also wishing that her character played a bigger role in the story).

We have an idea of the 18-year-old Elliott immediately, because Stella embodies the eagerness and flippancy of the character so well. Watching Plaza, as the two-decades-older version of the character, and the way she softens those edges of the character, then, raises a bit of mystery. What will happen/has happened to Elliott in the 21 years between these two versions of the character?

Yes, the older Elliott is real and not, as the younger one assumes, merely a hallucination. Park handles this metaphysical concept smartly—by simply accepting it as a fact and not bothering with any kind of explanation, beyond a jokey one that Elliott doesn't react well to drugs. Since we don't have to think about how this occurs or what the potential consequences and paradoxes of this kind of time travel—if that's even what it is—might be, the film is free to explore the more personal ramifications of this connection. It continues, by the way, because the older Elliott puts her phone number into her younger incarnation's cellphone, and somehow, they're able to message and call each other.

Some of the bond is as simple as the older Elliott's advice for her younger self to spend more time with her family—golfing with middle sibling Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) and not taking conversations with her mother (played by Maria Dizzia) for granted. Much of it, though, has to do with Chad (Percy Hynes White), the teenaged grandson of a neighboring farmer. The older Elliott warns her younger self to avoid him at all costs, but teenage Elliott can't figure out why. He seems harmless and kind, and eventually, Elliott begins to question her sexuality, since she always assumed she's only attracted to girls.

The bigger story points here, as younger Elliott spends more time bonding with her family and confused about whether to trust her feelings for Chad or her older self's warnings about him, are sweet and intriguing. There's a lovely scene, for example, between Elliott and her mother, who explains how parenting is a continual mix feeling proud for the accomplishments of one's child and a constant sense of being less important in that child's life. The budding romance at the core of the plot is appropriately awkward and genuinely portrayed by the two actors, and it leads to a revelation that is as unexpected as it is bittersweet, especially considering who's involved in that scene.

What hits more than the broad strokes of the story and the occasional bits of broader humor are the smaller moments between the two Elliotts. Their first meeting is amusing, but beneath the jokes are nuggets of painful truth about growing up and how one's priorities, attitude, and outlook change without even noticing it. As the two talk on the phone, there are more such conversations, and at a certain point, the older Elliott disappears from the tale, leaving a gap that's quite noticeable because of the strength of how Park uses that version of the character to dig deeper into the themes at the core of the story.

The rest of it, of course, is still fine—better than that, even, when My Old Ass takes its characters, relationships, and ideas seriously. The film earns its emotionally loaded conclusion (made even heartbreaking by the subtlety of Plaza's performance in a crucial scene), because it's not just about telling us what will happen/has happened to Elliott. It's an intersection of smartly developed characters and ideas paying off in an effective and affecting way.

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