My Old Ass is a high-concept breath of fresh air coming-of-age tale from writer and director Megan Park. The film stars Maisy Stella as Elliot, a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood, and Aubrey Plaza as Elliot twenty years in the future. The two meet after young Elliot takes a few too many mushrooms on a birthday camping trip with her friends. Older Elliot puts her number in her younger self’s phone under the tongue-in-cheek contact name “My Old Ass.”

My Old Ass uses this time-traveling future self-conversing narrative brilliantly. The film takes no time explaining the rules of their conversation or hypothesizing about the potential damages. My Old Ass is a movie about talking to your younger self in the most literal of ways. After years of Marvel’s time-hopping and multiversal world-destroying, a film that uses a high concept to convey a simple idea is a standout for modern cinema.

What Would You Tell Your Younger Self?

Young Elliot in the film has just celebrated a birthday and is getting ready to leave her family’s cranberry farm to attend college in the big city of Toronto. She is a bit precocious and has little time for her family or the farm, spending most of her time daydreaming about how much better life will be when she leaves behind the simple life. Yes, this movie borrows heavily from Hallmark channel tropes. But My Old Ass uses them in such a sincere way with exceptional actors that it’s forgivable. The scenery and aesthetic of the lakeside farm is instantly charming and the chemistry between the actors is phenomenal. My Old Ass may feel like a Hallmark flick on the surface but underneath is a much stronger story with well-realized themes.

Elliot meets her older self early on in the film and the two immediately start calling and texting each other every day. Elliot has found an older and wiser friend who only wants what’s best for her. After pleading with her old self for a hint of some future advice, Aubrey Plaza only gives a vague foreshadowing comment to stay away from anyone named Chad.

Creating a Villian Chad

The mysterious Chad quickly shows up as a summer farm hand on Elliot’s family’s cranberry farm. Percy Hynes White as Chad is a standout in this film and the result of truly inspired casting. Most films with this Lifetime/Hallmark movie-style plot would cast an impossibly gorgeous ruggedly handsome lead to play the role. Chad here is kind, cute, and awkwardly goofy. The exact person an 18-year-old would fall in love with not simply lust after.

Elliot and Chads will they won’t they is the only major conflict of the film and that works to its detriment. My Old Ass has a brisk runtime of only 89 minutes but the lack of any real stakes or major conflict can make the film drag a bit in the middle. There isn’t a distinct three-act structure here. Instead, we just get a quick setup followed by an hour of Elliot listening to her older self before a final reveal that neatly ties a bow on the whole story. This isn’t unforgivable and though the film can pudder along at times, the tenderness of the characters allows the audience to remain invested in Elliot throughout her story.

High Concept, Low Stakes

Ever since Avengers Endgame the Marvel Cinematic Universe and countless other media have had an obsession with time travel and multiverses. Changing the past has become such a trend in cinema we’ve seen it in everything from the biggest film of the year to the biggest flop of the year. Whenever Hollywood makes a high concept like this it seems all they care about is explaining the rules and saving the world. My Old Ass bucks these trends and instead asks the audience to focus on the present.

Young Elliot doesn’t spend that much time trying to pry future knowledge out of her older self. Her warning about Chad is all she needs to hear and is the only advice she doesn’t heed. My Old Ass takes this premise of future knowledge and uses it in a unique way that I won’t spoil, but the reveal is sure to leave moviegoers teary-eyed and nostalgic.

Adolescence and My Old Ass

About midway through the film on an Old Ass unsanctioned boat ride, Chad asks Elliot a pointed question. He asks if she remembers the last time she spent the entire day outside playing pretend with her friends. Elliot ponders for a second and admits she can’t remember the last time this happened. She has countless memories of doing so but is unable to recall when it came to an end.

Chad is essentially laying out for Elliot and the audience the moral of My Old Ass. Playing pretend outside with friends is an almost universal experience. We’ve all spent the day playing cops and robbers in the backyard or running away from monsters around our neighborhood. But one day we all laid down our bikes, dropped our swords made of sticks, and went inside never to play pretend again. It’s bittersweet because we don’t have the pain of knowing it would be the last time, but we also weren’t able to savor that moment.

My Old Ass asks the question which is better? Knowing the future so we can savor the present, or being unaware to avoid the pain? It’s a question that becomes acutely personal to the characters in the film but it’s a truth the audience can take home. Every other movie that involves time travel or conversing with the future is obsessed with changing the past. My Old Ass is only concerned with savoring the present.