If you had the chance, what would you say to your younger self? That's what Emily gets the chance to do in Megan Park's My Old Ass, a coming-of-age comedy-drama that wears the quirkiness it possesses like a badge of honour.
An 18th-birthday mushroom trip brings Elliott (Maisy Stella) face-to-face with her wisecracking 39-year-old self. When the older Elliott (Aubrey Plaza) starts handing out warnings about what her younger self should and shouldn't do, she realizes she has to rethink everything about family, love, and what's becoming a transformative summer.
You might go into this film expecting it to be a fun-filled comedy fuelled by the drugs Elliott takes to be visited by her older self. It's what I went in expecting and it really took me by surprise just how emotional and poignant Megan Park's sophomore effort ended up being. It shouldn't come as a surprise after the great work Park delivered with The Fallout previously, and she brings more tender moments to life here quite wonderfully. In a world where we've seen so many coming-of-age films try and take a new approach to things, it's great to see one actually thrive through good writing and solid direction.
What the film eventually ends up doing with its plot might be glaringly obvious - older Elliott warning her younger self to stay away from a boy called Chad - but the end results of how Park deals with it in the narrative makes it quite devastatingly beautiful.
Maisy Stella's breakout performance here as Elliott in her younger years is the kind you just love to see. The youthful arrogance she has towards life challenged, leading her character to take a journey she'd never expect. Stella grows as an actor throughout the film mirroring the growth Elliott goes through after liaising with her older self. Can see Maisy Stella being an ever-present in the indie circuit for a while after this. The limited presence of Aubrey Plaza (sorry to those expecting her to be in it more) is an effective one for sure - once they get past the initial stage of saying "Oh my god!" to each other to begin with. It just goes to show that, even with a few scenes in the film, Plaza is a fine actor that manages to deliver such a heartbreaking performance in the closing stages of the film.
It's hard not to fall in love with as pleasant a surprise as My Old Ass, quite an odd sentence to read out of context I'm sure. A cute coming-of-age film with a fine lead performance from a name I'm sure we'll see more of in the future, what's not to like?
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