Life Going Nowhere? You Need A Visit From ‘My Old Ass’
It’s not quite time travel, but it’s the next best thing. Canadian Megan Park’s second feature is a breezy and touching fantasy about getting advice from your older self
Just by chance, we’ve been pondering growing older a lot lately. A few weeks back we reflected on the value of seniors in Thelma. Then, the male perception of women’s bodies as they age naturally in The Substance.
Now, another angle on ageing has hit our screens with My Old Ass — and as the title kinda suggests, it’s a light-hearted (yet deeply meaningful) delight. It’s been described as “a future classic” by Variety and “one of the best coming-of-age comedies in forever” by The Playlist, and they’re not wrong.
Written and directed by Canadian Megan Park, it’s no big surprise to learn that the film was produced by Margot Robbie & team under their LuckyChap Entertainment banner — an outfit that aims to address the gender gap in the film industry by promoting “female stories from female storytellers.” And while it miiight not pull in the $QUILLION$ of dollars that Barbie did, we’re gonna say it — My Old Ass is equally thought-provoking and grin-inducing.
What is My Old Ass about?
Our hero is 18th birthday girl Elliott (played with winning, throwaway charm by Maisy Stella), and we figure out four things about her instantly: she’s confident, she’s funny, she’s tomboyish, and she likes girls. We also get a sense of her itchy, keen-to-start-my-life vibe; she’s planning to leave her rural Canadian home ASAP to jumpstart her hopes and dreams.
“Mad respect to my ancestors but I can’t be a 3rd generation cranberry farmer,” Elliott tells her BFFs on a birthday camping trip around the fire. “I’ve got energy, I’ve gotta live, you know!” Well, things are about to get lively when the psychotropic mushrooms get handed around with glee (because hey, nothing bad happens on shrooms — right?).
With her mates off tree-hugging, Elliott nearly chokes on her toasted marshmallow when her 39-year-old self (played by Aubrey Plaza) suddenly appears for a chat. What the actual f**k?! Is she just a shroom-lucination? Did she fall through a weird Canadian wormhole? Our advice is, don’t get too hung up on the “how” — like Freaky Friday ‘s body swap or a time-travelling DeLorean, it’s way more fun just to believe it’s possible (we’re at the movies, fam!).
Actresses Stella and Plaza don’t really look all that alike, either, so Park cleverly gets the differences out of the way early (like when younger Elliott points out, wait, there’s a gap in your teeth? and older Elliott quips back, “Yeah f**k you, wear your retainer!”). That leaves us free to settle into the fantasy as the real themes get explored. “Tell me something good about the future!” Elliott presses her older self. “Will I have a house and kids?!”
Older Elliott’s reply speaks volumes about the gulf between breaking into young adulthood and tipping into your forties: “Ahh. I forgot how simple things seemed…”
How does My Old Ass explore perspectives in life?
What Park creates with her setup is an ingenious examination of the mindset of someone who “has their whole life ahead of them”. What if that bubble was pierced by a version of you who’s already lived a chunk of that life? What would you ask them? And conversely, by the time you reach 40, what have you forgotten (or let go of) about the goals and dreams you had at 20?
The good chewy stuff here is that bringing an older and younger version of the same character together creates a mashup of the future, the past and the present all at once. You know when someone might say “let your life experience inform you”? Elliott’s life experience is literally informing her — all 21 extra years of it. In a funny way, it’s like having a life translator. She’s getting insights from her own self, but that “self” has had way more experience at interpreting different emotions and decisions. At 18, that’s a superpower.
At first, Elliott is upset that her “old ass” is keeping her cards (their cards?) pretty close to her chest. Older Elliott’s rationale? She doesn’t want to say too much about how things turn out, because “it’ll ruin the surprise of life.” The only big detail she gives away is that she MUST stay away from anyone named Chad AT ALL COSTS. Elliott’s fuzzy, angry reaction is priceless: “You have ONE chance to tell your younger self our worst regret and all you tell me is to avoid some dude named Chad?!”
Older Elliott urges her 18-year-old self to simply Take my advice and make our life better. When you think about it, it’s a truly delicious opportunity. Gently, over the film’s second act, Elliott starts to integrate some of her older self’s ideas, pulling back on her feisty desperation to escape, and spending some (initially awkward) quality time with her brothers and Mum.
In one particularly authentic scene, Elliott reconnects over a childhood moment with her Mum, who’s wrestling with not wanting her only daughter to fly the nest, while knowing that a) she needs to, and b) it’s exactly what she herself wanted to do at 18. It’s an interesting mirror to Older Elliott: both are older women, both have life experience, and both love Elliott and desperately want what’s best for her. Funnily enough, listening to one helps Elliott bond with the other.
“As I’m writing, it feels like me figuring out grief and loss and motherhood, and all these little things that I’m sort of figuring out about myself or my past. It is a very cathartic experience.”
~ Writer/Director Megan Park, theaureview.com
What does My Old Ass have to say about sexuality and labels?
One of the most refreshing aspects of My Old Ass is Elliott’s openness as a same-sex attracted woman in her late teens. That’s an age where reckoning with self-identity is totally normal, but the way Park has written Elliott, she’s oozing a natural sense of self-assuredness. Her comfort is also a reflection of how far we’ve progressed as a society — Elliott’s sexuality simply isn’t a drama, for her or others. She’s not shy about her girl crushes and sex life. Her sexuality isn’t her struggle here — at least, not until her old ass shows up.
The first hint at Elliott’s fluidity comes with a joke. To convince her she’s really her older self, Older Elliott reveals something only she’d know: “Okay, your left boob is one cup smaller than the right.” While Elliott’s grappling with that little nugget of truth, Older Elliott drops a subtle tag line: “It never catches up, but guys can’t notice. Girls can.” It’s a throwaway clue that Elliott’s future romances don’t lie exclusively with the same sex.
That adds a layer of intrigue to “the Chad thing”. Because we’ve gotten to know Elliott as gay, we don’t categorise the mysterious stranger as a love interest, and neither does she. So who is this guy, and why is her old ass warning her away from him so strongly? It’s the question mark that prods us from under every scene. Does he attack her in the future? Does he hurt someone she loves? Is he a sex offender? Does he vote Republican?
None of that seems likely when Elliott eventually does cross paths with the friendly, slightly off-beat Chad (played to perfection by Percy Hynes White). He’s respectful, and funny, and uniquely, weirdly magnetic. And like telling a toddler NOT to do something, the more Elliott tries to heed the STERN warnings from her old ass, the more she finds herself drawn to this lanky, chivalrous young guy.
What Park writes Elliott to experience here is two different sets of confusion: being attracted to someone you never thought you would, and being mystified why Older Elliott keeps insisting this feeling is wrong, and she needs to run. It’s definitely giving abuse vibes (even though Chad himself definitely isn’t). Elliott’s even more puzzled when the make-out session she’s been dreaming about for months with the local waitress turns out to be strangely unexciting.
“Am I bi?” Elliott confides in her mate Ro (Kerrice Brooks). “What does this actually mean? I was always so sure that I was into women. But when I’m with him…” It’s as though she’s in need of a new categorisation for herself. That’s when Ro gives her best friend some pretty sage advice (which frankly, could’ve been handily taught a generation ago): “Labels, if they feel useful, then use them. If they don’t, then don’t. What does your gut tell you to do?”
It’s a question Elliott doesn’t really need to answer. We can feel — and probably relate to — that stomach-churning, late-teens feeling. She’s falling in love. But the implications of that have real depth: by shaking up Elliott’s surety around her sexuality, Megan Park makes her character feel a sort of double-betrayal; she’s acting against the urges of her past self, AND her future self. It’s a pretty neat trick.
“I read Elliott as a ball of love. I’m so used to all of these coming of age movies where the teenagers are pretty angsty and brooding and mysterious. It was exciting to have a lead character not need that… to have it be light instead of darkness.”
~ Actress Maisy Stella, theaureview.com
It’s not the only trick Park has up her sleeve. For all her poking and prodding at the teenage psyche, there’s PLENTY of take away from My Old Ass for adults who are edging ever closer to that black hole of existential angst (otherwise known as turning 40). In an early scene, staring at Aubrey Plaza’s infamously dour expression, Elliott wonders why she seems so down.
“I thought I’d be happier at 40?”
I am happy! And I’m not 40, asshole!
“You don’t look happy. You look like you’re having a mid life crisis.”
Thing is, younger Elliott isn’t entirely wrong. For the same person, they’re pretty different — the joy and wisecracks and cute indifference in the younger Elliott has faded into a dry persona that seems cautious, wounded and sad. We wonder what Older Elliott has lost when she advises her younger self that “The only thing you can’t get back is time. When you get older, it goes by so fast, dude.”
Park is keen to underline that this mystical ageing highway actually runs both ways, and just because she’s got 20 more years on the clock doesn’t mean that Older Elliott can’t learn a thing or two in return from her “younger, dumber” persona: she’s also livelier, and braver, and wise beyond her years. Isn’t it strange, Park seems to be asking, how we get more careful the older we get? Shouldn’t it kinda be the other way around?
Interestingly, one of the key pieces of real-life advice experts give in terms of getting comfy with ageing better is to be “more empathetic” with your older self. Park certainly taps into something here, building a mystery around Older Elliott’s sorrow and her changes from her younger self. My Old Ass gives us a mini roadmap around how to open ourselves up to, and even have a conversation with, the older selves we’re all becoming.
To say anything more would be a huge spoiler, so we’ll just include this killer line that Older Elliott shares with her mini-Me, which just about sums up the whole message of My Old Ass: “Keep being the naive, dumb, optimistic idiot that you are because it’s perfect!”
I was such an idiot when I was 18. I’d want to go back and give myself a good talking to. I would have told myself, ‘You’re gonna f**king waste your life on your phone. Throw it in the river.’ And I would tell myself to invest in Apple.”
~ Writer/Director Megan Park, thecut.com
So what’s the takeaway from My Old Ass?
My Old Ass is a damn fun movie. It’s partly the fantastic, rapid-fire dialogue (the whole movie is a speedy treat, yet somehow chill at the same time). It’s partly the refreshingly natural look and feel of the characters — for example, Elliott’s hair’s never perfect. It’s not a “movie” looking movie. Maybe that’s why we felt more belief in this story than other “magical realism” films.
The concept is just so juicy — who wouldn’t want to know which pitfalls to avoid in their future? Who wouldn’t want to go back and give yourself the advice that nobody else ( literally nobody) is equipped to give? But after that top layer of fun is peeled back, writer/director Megan Park asks us to ponder the delicate balance between life experience being a gift, and a burden.
What My Old Ass speaks to is the impossible paradox of growing up. At 18, we all want our independence, but we miss home when we move out. We want to be given the answers, but figure it out on our own. We want to feel everything deeply, even if it hurts that much more when it ends. As Elliott’s old ass tells her in one key scene, describing that first, insanely deep love you might fall into at 18: “It’s like… safety and freedom all at once.” Another paradox.
Sadly, we can’t bend time (outside of that DeLorean we mentioned). But with her second feature, Park suggests that maybe discovery is a greater gift. Hindsight is powerful, but so is NOT knowing how things are going to go, or which moments in our lives will be the “last time”. Somehow, not knowing makes them more special. And while it’s very human to want to avoid pain, you might also miss life’s greatest pleasures.
Originally published at https://good.film/guide.
