‘My Old’ Ass’ is Nothing New

‘My Old Ass,’ the unfortunately-titled sweet but slight young-adult romantic dramedy from writer-director Megan Park, bills as an Aubrey Plaza vehicle. Warning: though Plaza does appear in two long-ish scenes, she’s offscreen for most of the movie, only manifesting as a disembodied phone voice or as a text-messaging semi-ghost from the future. If you’re looking for an Aubrey Plaza fix, this movie is barely a cup of coffee.

The true star of My Old Ass is Maisy Stella, recognizable to fans of the TV show ‘Nashville‘, making her feature-film debut. She plays Elliott, an 18-year-old lesbian who lives with her loving family on a rural Ontario cranberry farm. So yes, we are in indie-film territory. Elliott is on the verge of leaving home for a grand adventure at the University of Toronto. One night she drinks mushroom tea with her friends on a camping excursion, and the resulting drug trip manifests her 39-year-old self in the form of Plaza. Older Elliott warns younger Elliott that the future is not what she thinks it’s going to be, and also to “stay away from someone named Chad.”

MY OLD ASS  ★★★ (3/5 stars)
Directed by: Megan Park
Written by: Megan Park
Starring: Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White
Running time: 88 mins

Chad appears a couple of scenes later, and he is so adorable that Elliott can’t help falling for him. And therein lies the tension of My Old Ass. Will she Chad or won’t she Chad? Plaza gives some other helpful advice, like “appreciate your parents and spend more time with your brothers,” which young Elliott takes to heart, leading to some tender scenes that wouldn’t have been out of place in an old episode of ‘Seventh Heaven.’ But the tension with smart, sensitive, doe-eyed Chad takes up most of the runtime.

My Old Ass falls into a genre of wish-fulfillment time-travel fantasy, and also age-swapping, that’s reminiscent of classics like ‘Big’ and ‘Peggy Sue Got Married.’ But it doesn’t have the belly laughs of the former nor the wistful grownup weirdness of the latter. Its central message of “live in the moment, every moment” feels like a daytime talk-show message. And it doesn’t take the central conceit far enough. At one point we hear an emergency siren in the distance and Plaza tells Stella to enjoy eating salmon while it still exists, and also that in the future the government doesn’t allow you to have three kids. This points toward some sort of clichéd climate-change catastrophe, but it’s at least more interesting than watching two cute kids flirt and dry-hump in a rowboat.

Stella is appealing; Park allows her big eyes to swallow the camera in nearly every scene, and she gets to exercise her substantial musical chops in an extended Justin Bieber-influenced dream sequence. She exudes Lizzie McGuire vibes, but with more substance. And Plaza, as always, gives her scenes everything she has, with full believability. She’s simply one of the best. Percy Hynes White, who plays Chad, is cute and appealing. But the film is slight, almost like a Black Mirror episode brought to you by the Lifetime Network. It’s a soft and mushy dessert in a hard-edged time.