Time keeps on slippin’ (and tripping) in snappy, sappy coming-of-age My Old Ass

It’s easy to respect the laissez-faire approach My Old Ass takes to time travel, and even easier to fall for how quickly the coming-of-age dramedy introduces it. Elliott (18 and itching to leave home, played by Maisy Stella) chats with her older self (39 and, by virtue of being played by Aubrey Plaza, bitter about it) in the first major scene. The Elliotts look forward and back at their shared, possibly malleable life during an evening of particularly potent mushroom tea. This drug-driven introspection, kept snappy and sharp-tongued by writer-director Megan Park, frontloads the film with a fantastical conceit and co-star that both quickly fade. In the harsh, sober sunlight, My Old Ass’ selling points remain but a pleasant memory as a conventional collegebound romance unfolds.

After the effects of the psilocybin wear off, all that’s left of elder Elliott is her advice (spend time with the family; avoid any and all Chads) and her cell number, inexplicably but charmingly in service. Future Elliott becomes more explicitly a voice in present Elliott’s head, a snarky conscience haunted by hindsight and casually dropping asides about the dystopian future a stressed-out Gen Z is barreling towards. Considering that Aubrey Plaza just might not have been available much for a Sundance-bound indie like My Old Ass, the cleverness of her scant appearances almost outweighs the disappointment of only seeing her spark briefly with Maisy Stella.

Stella is excellent as the younger Elliott, making the leap from TV’s Nashville to the big screen with confidence; matching energy with Plaza isn’t a given, and her well-established grumpiness gets a playful needling from Stella’s snide-yet-still-sweet performance. Stella’s aided by a script that doesn’t try too hard to be generationally specific (being wistful about your aging parents and blinded by a summer crush never gets old) while getting the details of its lead right. She’s funny without always meaning to be, and shitty without ever meaning to be—a self-involved teenager, with both feet out her family’s loving door.

There’s a quaint charm to the sophomore film from Park (whose debut The Fallout also tapped into teen coming-of-age with uncommon realism) only deploying its Downy-soft sci-fi to color its predictable narrative. But because the moments where the Elliotts converse have such zing, the rest of My Old Ass is effectively sitting by the phone counting the minutes. We become as hooked on those calls as Elliott becomes hooked on the ultimate comfort of chatting with someone who knows for a fact how the hazy future will shake out. But unlike the adrift teen, whom the movie never quite places in a position of dependence, My Old Ass’ energy relies on returning to the Elliotts, revealing just how sapped of juice the movie is without their interplay.

Removed from Plaza’s battery-acid electricity, Stella is stuck trying to appreciate the taken-for-granted mundanity represented by a cast of single-joke characters (a little brother obsessed with Saoirse Ronan) or characters there simply to serve Elliott (a supportive Black friend, played by Kerrice Brooks, who seems inherited from a previous generation of movies like this). Elliott attempts to oblige her surreal encounter with the future, boating around their idyllic lake and helping her parents on their cranberry farm, when she runs into Chad (Percy Hynes White).

The dreaded Chad. Naturally, Elliott, steered away from a guy in 2024, assumes he’s some sort of sex pest or soon-to-be serial killer…only, why does he have to be so cute? And why does future Elliott stop answering her phone right when the going gets horny? Well, because without narrative contrivances, My Old Ass doesn’t work and its surprising pivot—into Nicholas Sparks territory, by way of TikTok—makes even less sense.

That sentimental writer’s dawdling waterfront scenery ogling, odd addiction to bittersweetness, and penchant for using an unexpected rainstorm as an aphrodisiac usurps the unassuming, lean filmmaking of My Old Ass’ more comic first half. When this happens, the cutesy and overdramatic score (from Jaco Caraco and Park’s husband, Tyler Hilton) finally makes sense. Clocking in at just under 90 minutes, My Old Ass barely has room to be one kind of movie, so its hard turn into swoony romance often feels like it’s scrambling to make up for lost time.

Hynes White and Stella’s hyperactive connection contributes to this, but also feels appropriate; at least it feels true to teenage jitters—chemistry driven by hormones first, emotions second. Hynes White channels a charming, self-effacing, Alex Winter-esque doofus, his sproingy energy matching the breezy jaunt of the narrative and the wholesomeness of its telling. His lack of character (outside being the object of Elliott’s increasing affections) reflects the fantasy the movie pushes throughout. The magic around Chad is the same in those time-tripping mushrooms; a simplistic, hallucinatory fulfillment of a teenager’s wish. My Old Ass sometimes has a healthy embarrassment around this, but more often leans hard into big emotions it never earns.

Though its bold genre gamble and strong lead turn from Maisy Stella keep My Old Ass from the YA slush pile, its feint towards being a more cerebral movie about hope and regret, two opposing forces separated only by time, infects the mediocrity of its more traditional story with disappointment. In this way, one enters My Old Ass with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of young Elliott and exits with the weariness of her future self.

Director: Megan Park
Writer: Megan Park
Starring: Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler, Kerrice Brooks, Aubrey Plaza
Release Date: September 13, 2024