If you could go back in time and talk to your teenage self, what would you say?
Wear your retainer. Moisturize. Be nice to your mom. Spend more time with your brothers.
This is the advice Elliott receives from her older self in “My Old Ass,” which arrived in theaters Sept. 13. Directed by Megan Park, the film follows teenage Elliott, who gets high one night and encounters her 39-year-old self. Older Elliott disappears after the high, leaving younger Elliott with a phone number under the contact “MY OLD ASS” — and questioning what she knows about her life, her relationships and herself.
In a genre plagued with decades-late sequels and remakes, “My Old Ass” is original. It has everything you expect from a coming-of-age movie: charming characters, wit, romance. But, it also represents a more modern wave of bildungsroman — stories that are fresher, bolder and more honest about what it’s like to grow up.
The film pinpoints the details of young adulthood. It opens with Elliott, played by Maisy Stella, on her 18th birthday as she drives her boat recklessly, crushes on the girl at the coffee shop and misses her own birthday dinner with her family. She and her friends — Ro, played by Kerrice Brooks, and Ruthie, played by Maddie Ziegler — speak, dress and interact like average teenagers as opposed to vain and phone-obsessed tropes we often see.
When Elliott’s 39-year-old self, played by Aubrey Plaza, appears during teenage Elliott’s mushroom trip in the woods, she tells her younger self to be present in these last three weeks before college. Above all, older Elliott warns her not to get involved with someone named Chad. Elliott is confused — she’s a lesbian, and she doesn’t know a Chad. It’s comforting to know the teen film genre has not yet outgrown naming a love interest “Chad.”
Elliott’s actresses have delightful chemistry. Stella is incredible in her breakout film role — her portrayal of 18-year-old Elliott is funny and authentic and someone I want to befriend. As 39-year-old Elliott, Plaza breaks out of her sardonic, impenetrable typecast but maintains her deadpan sense of humor. She displays a rare vulnerability as a sister-like figure to her younger self, when they first meet and over many phone calls and text exchanges afterward.
The bulk of the story follows Elliott as she strives to appreciate the last drops of summer before the rest of her life begins. She attends family dinners, golfs with her brother and — against her older self’s advice — grows to like Chad, played by Percy Hynes White, after they meet-cute while swimming in a lake.
“My Old Ass” is insightful without glamorizing what it’s like to be 18. Yes, Elliott and Chad share a butterflies-in-stomach-inducing kiss in the rain, but it is not Peter Parker and M.J.’s melodramatic, upside-down rain kiss in “Spider-Man.” The progression of their relationship feels natural, a culmination of days of subtle hints and the realization they will be attending the same college in a week.
Among the film’s sentimental moments — like Elliott bonding with her mom or curling up to sleep in her brothers’ room — were hilarious ones. For instance, Elliott, a lifelong lesbian, jokingly “comes out” to Ro as also experiencing attraction to men as she navigates her feelings for Chad. The movie also featured far more references to Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” and one more drug-induced performance of a Justin Bieber song than I expected.
It acknowledges the messiness of yearning for adulthood while wanting to freeze the teen years. It encapsulates the emotional whiplash that is the summer before college — when you don’t know whether to laugh with your friends or to cry because it might be the last time you’re all together. Elliott’s desire to leave home wavers further as she realizes it might not be the same when she returns.
The film was strongest when the two Elliotts appeared on screen together, which didn’t occur enough as Plaza’s character is present mostly via phone. The lure of “My Old Ass” lies in Elliott interacting with her future self, so it’s less engaging when this occurs predominantly aurally and rarely visually.
Any film that messes with space-time and future selves requires some degree of suspension of disbelief. Older Elliott’s presence via phone jarred me from belief. How can she phone younger Elliott from 21 years in the future? If Elliott met her future self because she drank mushroom tea, why can she see and even touch older Elliott without drugs?
When older Elliott resurfaces after days of no contact, younger Elliott confesses that she is in love with Chad, which prompts the revelation to why that’s so terrible: Chad dies. Older Elliott doesn’t say how and when this happens, only that she wanted to save her younger self from that pain.
Following older Elliott’s advice to stay away, I was hesitant about Chad and didn’t expect to care about the film’s romance. But, like he won over Elliott, Chad charmed me, so this revelation was a well-timed punch to the gut. But the disbelief nagged again: Wouldn’t Elliott’s knowledge of Chad’s eventual untimely death impact the future?
“My Old Ass” doesn’t concern itself with those types of questions, which is probably for the best — it doesn’t have the bandwidth or the need to explore them. The film has science fiction elements, but it is not about the consequences of tempting time and space. It cares about time in a different respect: learning to live in the present.
Many teen movies fail when the protagonist starts making unreasonable decisions for drama’s sake. But when Elliott chooses to love Chad no matter what lies ahead, she says it’s because being young and dumb makes her brave enough to risk it — Elliott is an authentic vessel for the challenges that come with growing up.
The love story was unexpectedly poignant, but the story remains centered on Elliott’s personal growth — a welcome departure from the finales of most teen classics, when the female protagonist’s arc ends once she secures the guy. “My Old Ass” ends with Elliott confident in her decisions as she rides across the lake, living in the present.
In its succinct 89-minute runtime, the film transforms a number of done-before bildungsroman themes into older-sisterly advice: Be kind to yourself. Don’t rush to grow up. Love in spite of, and because of, the possibility of losing someone. And, no matter how badly you might want to talk to your older self, there are just as many lessons to be learned from your current self.
