A smart, sassy spin on the letters-to-my-younger-self subgenre, Megan Park’s second feature follows Elliott, an 18-year-old (confidently played by the Nashville regular Maisy Stella) who obliviously walks out on her birthday party and heads off with her two best friends, Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks).
Her neglected family wait and wonder when to cut the cake as the heedless girls take a motorboat to a small island in Lake Muskoka and drop some magic mushrooms. Just as Elliott is wondering if the psychedelics are having an effect, she finds herself receiving sage life advice from her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza).
It’s all just a hallucination, right? Maybe not. In the days that follow, the women can – somehow – communicate by mobile phone. Worse, older Elliott knows too much. When she sternly warns about a guy named Chad, an annoying but irresistible teen by that name (Percy Hynes White) inconveniently shows up during Elliott’s skinny dip. It’s confusing. Elliott has previously identified as a lesbian. But their awkward first exchange does little to deter the inevitable.
The low-fi sci-fi mines much hilarity from the Elliott exchanges and Plaza’s reliable drollery. Younger Elliot is appalled that, aged 39, she’s still a student: PhD be damned. Older Elliott wants the teenager to spend more time with her parents and brothers – including the sibling obsessed with Saoirse Ronan – before leaving the family’s cranberry farm for university in Toronto.
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Park, a former teen star, made her directorial debut with The Fallout, a delicate drama unpicking survivor’s guilt following a school shooting. This Margot Robbie-produced follow-up delivers on the promise of that first feature. My Old Ass sensitively and sweetly negotiates coming-of-age themes, first love, wistful summer recollections and wise-cracking dialogue.
My Old Ass is in cinemas from Friday, September 27th; it will also stream on Prime Video
