Clever and uniquely heartwarming, filmmaker Megan Park’s second feature My Old Ass looks at existential philosophy from the perspective of a young person. Maybe that’s a bit pretentious to say about something that takes the unassuming form of a stoner hang out movie, but My Old Ass is a movie that’s wise beyond its years, while still managing to be a crowd pleaser whose emotional impact gently creeps up on the audience. Writer-director Park (The Fallout) knows that teenagers are smarter than adults give them credit for, but they’re also aware that young people can be their own worst enemies, which makes the high concept hook of My Old Ass more than just a nifty way to deliver a simple story.
Muskoka area teen Elliott (Maisy Stella) has just blown off the eighteenth birthday party her parents and younger siblings have set up for her in favour of hooking up with her dream girl crush (Alexandria Rivera) and getting high off mushrooms with her two best friends (Kerrice Brooks and Maddie Ziegler). She’s moving to Toronto in three weeks and is desperate to leave small town life behind, but that fateful psilocybin fuelled night of fun will create an unusual wrinkle in Elliott’s plans. Elliott begins to see and communicate with the 39-year old version of herself (Aubrey Plaza), a hallucination that carries on seemingly long after the mushrooms have worn off. Older Elliott has come to warn her younger self that she should spend more time with her siblings (Seth Isaac Johnson and Carter Trozzolo), go easier on poor old mom (Maria Dizzia), and to never give in to the charms of a guy named Chad (Percy Hynes White), a kindly, dorky seasonal worker at her parents’ cranberry bog.
Park shows that she has thought a lot about how perspective changes across our lives and the way those shifting attitudes and viewpoints influence the way we spend our time. Older Elliott struggles to tell her younger self anything great about the future, but also curiously won’t elaborate on things she can do to change or alter the future. The performances of Stella and Plaza pair perfectly with each other, even if the older performer doesn’t entirely look like a credible version of the younger. Stella’s irrepressible energy and emotional awakening provides Plaza’s hardened, cynical, and protective version of the same character with a perfect foil. Teens don’t always figure out what’s in their best interests until it’s too late, but the performances and smartly written material shows that their instincts can prove to be more valuable to their happiness than pre-ordained edicts.
My Old Ass is a frequently hilarious, often silly film based around the simplest of premises – what would you tell your younger self if you could meet them – but there’s also a lot of tenderness and warmth throughout that elevates the concept. Some of the wrinkles along the way might be a tad predictable, but each individual scene bristles with spontaneity and emotional truth, all of it executed with extreme care by Park and her cast. (The gorgeously photographed lakeside Muskoka locations surely don’t hurt, either.) Despite the ages of the characters and modernity of Park’s dialogue, My Old Ass tells an instantly relatable story that resonates across generations. What if the safety net you so carefully assembled over time with plans and good intentions inevitably fails to shield you from the darker side of life? And how do you accept that things won’t always work out as much as you had hoped? Everyone on Earth has to wrestle with these feelings to different degrees, and Park’s film delicately and amusingly applies a warm hug to everyone’s rowdy and confused inner teenager.
My Old Ass is now playing in select theatres. It opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, September 27.
