My Old Ass sees an 18 year-old meet her 39 year-old self, and the result is a charming way to spend an hour and a half. Our review:
There are a couple of ways the core idea behind My Old Ass could have gone. Appreciating films always make different things out of the same story ingredients, the concept of a teen-leaning movie exploring someone having conversations with their older self brings back memories of 17 Again and 13 Going On 30. Also, aiming towards a teen audience suggests fast cuts, lively music and an eye on a future stage musical.
Not so here. In fact, My Old Ass is a delicate, charming, almost understated film, lifted further by two really strong central performances.
It turns out that Maisy Stella, who takes the lead role of Elliott in My Old Ass, has never appeared in a film before. She’s got a singing background and appeared in the TV drama Nashville. But here, she’s headlining a movie, and it’s as if she’s been doing it all her life. I’ve not been in the demographic for her work before – arguably I’m not here – and thus she was a new face to me. But what an acting talent. Someone who immediately seems at ease with the camera, and focused on bringing us a conflicted character.
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Elliott is 18 when we meet her, and writer-director Megan Park – it’s only the second time she’s stepped behind the camera for a feature – wastes little time setting the story up. Elliott, we swiftly learn, is desperate to move away from her family’s farm in the country, and begin her life properly (in her eyes). Still, there’s a girl she’s attracted to, and a trio of friends who indulge in a substance or two. In fact, they’re sat round breaking out the goodies very early in the first act.
Yet said substances have differing effects on the three of them. One starts doing cartwheels. One falls to the floor. Elliott? She meets Aubrey Plaza, who happens to be her future self, now aged 39.
Wisely following the rules of Groundhog Day – explain as little as possible as to why this has happened, and in this case, blame the drugs – what we then get is 18 year-old Elliott and 39 year-old Elliott. One young, raw, alienated from her family and her community. The other with far more answers, but not overly inclined to give them. They also link via smartphone, older Elliott added as ‘My Old Ass’ to the contacts list, and there are constant hints of darkness ahead, some of which the film is content to leave relatively unexplained. Not out of sloppiness, instead out of confident storytelling.
I don’t want to go deep into the plot, which starts to veer in the direction of a more traditional romance, but it’s quite a charming one. I’ll just observe that, to make a story like this work, you need characters to care about, and a setting that feels real.
Towards the end of the film, My Old Ass spells out its moral a little more overtly than I was expecting, a surprise in a film that otherwise lets us work much of it out for ourselves. But I appreciated both the economy and the gentle pacing, and in an otherwise modern-feeling movie, there’s something a little – in a good way – old fashioned about it all.
It turns out they do still make them like they used to: My Old Ass is a modern, relevant comedy-drama built on classic bones. And mark Megan Park and Maisy Stella – along with the rarely-wrongfooted, effortlessly wonderful Aubrey Plaza – as real film talents.
My Old Ass is in UK cinemas now.
