My Old Ass
Elliott (Maisy Stella, TV's 'Nashville") can’t wait to leave the family cranberry farm and head to college. She even ditches her parents and two brothers to spend her 18th birthday with her besties Ro (Kerrice Brooks) and Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler, "The Book of Henry") overnight on an uninhabited island on the lake she regularly boats across. After ingesting psychedelic mushrooms, Ro conks out and Ruthie dances off into the distance leaving Elliott sitting on a log where she will be shocked to be joined by her 39 year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) who offers advice and leaves her contact info on Elliott’s phone under “My Old Ass.”
Laura's Review: B
Writer/director Megan Park (“The Fallout”) combines a coming-of-age tale with a twist on the body swap comedy, upending our expectations when both versions of Elliott have something to learn from each other. The 39 year-old Elliott stresses spending time with family, especially Elliott’s mom Kathy (Maria Dizzia, "The Good Nurse"), leading the younger to jump to awful conclusions, reassurance causing her to note just how much her older self looks like her mother. But older Elliott becomes the most serious when she asks ‘Can you avoid guys called Chad?’ The request doesn’t seem that difficult, as we’re already aware that Elliott is in a hot relationship with Chelsea (Alexandria Rivera).
So, of course once Elliott’s returned home, cowed by news her family had waited with a birthday cake, and heads out for a skinny dip, who should she run into but a guy named Chad (Percy Hynes White, Netflix's 'Wednesday'), there for the summer to reconnect with his roots which includes working for Elliott’s dad Tom (Al Goulem) on the family farm. He seems perfectly charming, but forewarned, Elliott panics and heads home pronto. It is there that she discovers My Old Ass among her contacts, freaking out a second time. She sends off a text before heading out onto the lake on her motor boat, but when that text is returned, she panics yet again, tossing the phone out of the boat.
We’ll implausibly find her in the next scene removing her phone from a bowl of rice, its retrieval left to our imagination, a wobble that illustrates the under developed nature of Park’s fantastical premise, at least until Plaza’s last scene, the one which brings it home. There are also several underwritten characters like Ruthie, Chelsea and Elliott’s dad and younger brother Spencer (Carter Trozzolo), wholly defined by his Saoirse Ronan fandom, expressed when he jumps the gun claiming his sister’s bedroom. But Park gets something more essential and that is emotional truth, moving us as younger Elliott follows her older self’s advice by spending time with her parents and going golfing with older brother Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) who was under the impression she hated him. The fact that she didn’t know dad was selling the family farm comes as an unexpected blow, too, as she grows nostalgic for the place she was raring to leave. It is Chad who is the sticking point, Elliott surprising herself by falling in love with a boy.
As the younger Elliott, Stella traverses quite an arc, moving from self-obsessed teen to empathetic and loving adult, the actress reflecting her life lessons with natural grace. She and Hynes White are the heart of this story, the latter one of those perfect guys, yet somehow believable, imbuing the film’s best written scene (about not being able to savor a moment if you don’t know it will be your last) with a profundity that echoes later in Plaza’s last scene. Also notable here is Brooks, younger Elliott’s peer counterpart to Plaza, with her high spirited advice and support.
With “My Old Ass,” Park essentially illustrates the importance of stopping to smell the roses while the flowers are in bloom, but she’s done so with a quirky, youthful verve that makes the concept fresh.
Amazon/MGM releases "My Old Ass" in select theaters on 9/13/24, expanding on 9/20/24.
