Imaginative My Old Ass is a Time-Bending Experiential Journey to Self-Awareness
Living on a small Canadian island with her parents Kathy (Maria Dizzia) and Tom (Alain Goulem) and siblings Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) and Spencer (Carter Trozzolo), 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) can’t wait for summer to end so she can attend college in Toronto. It’s also her birthday, and the teenager only wants two things: to finally tell the barista working at the dockside coffeehouse how hot she is (and see where things go from there) and to go camping with her two best friends, Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler), whereupon they plan to experiment with magic mushrooms in moonlit seclusion.
After going two-for-two, Elliott never could have imagined what would happen next. While high on the mushrooms, and with Ro and Ruthie off on their own unique trips, Elliott discovers she’s sitting on a log next to her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). What she assumes to be a hallucination quickly proves to be anything but, leading to some crazy, Twilight Zone stuff neither can explain.
What would you do if you could speak with your future self? What would you want to know? What advice would you feel you could safely give? That’s the central conceit driving My Old Ass, writer-director Megan Park’s wonderful follow-up to her equally splendid 2021 abortion dramedy, The Fallout. Never taking things too far and staying emotionally grounded, this irreverent, imaginative, and empoweringly intimate coming-of-age tale is an experiential event worth celebrating.
Stella and Plaza are sublime. Playing the same character at different stages of their life, they achieve a delicately personal synchronicity I found wholly believable. It’s clear that the younger Elliott is rather impetuous and must discover truths for herself. She is eager to learn about the world outside of her island home, so much that she is prone to take for granted that her parents and siblings will always be there no matter what.
While older Elliott has toned down these aspects of her personality, old habits die hard. When her younger self wants insights into what their life will be like in the future, initially the older version with all the firsthand knowledge is reticent to share. But she can’t help herself, and while her suggestions as to how her doppelgänger should spend the summer before leaving for college are mostly benign (hang out more with your brothers, value your parents, stuff like that), she does rashly unleash a doozy that could have massive unintended consequences: avoid anyone named Chad.
I don’t want to dig too much into that statement, as doing so would lead toward spoiler territory. What I will say is that My Old Ass is one of the scant few unapologetically Bisexual character studies I have ever seen. Elliott is attracted to both men and women. While she can get excited by the former, it’s the latter she’s certain she’ll settle down and build a home with after college. Her reaction to the whole “Chad” thing is still lovably chaotic. But it turns Elliott’s entire world upside down, with moments as humorous as they are upsetting, as goofy as they are heartfelt.
It all leads to my favorite scene: Elliott doesn’t have the first clue as to the best way to process what’s happened. Before she knows it, she is “coming out” to Ro, as if she has to ask for permission to fall in love with a boy. Ro’s reaction is empathetic and priceless, a pure example of friendship, acceptance, and grace that brought tears to my eyes. Stella and Brooks are spellbinding in how they so deftly and authentically play off one another during this brief yet unforgettable moment of raw, cathartic openness.
In less than 90 minutes, Park covers a lot of fertile territory, with barely a false beat and precious little nonsense. As heavy (and heady) as this story of teenage rebellion and adult self-awareness gets, there’s refreshingly not a lot of pointless exposition. Instead, the director allows each narrative beat to be conveyed through Elliott’s interactions with the world and characters who surround her. This helps My Old Ass leave a lasting impression. It also makes it one of the best films of 2024.
– Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 3½ (out of 4)
