Aubrey Plaza in a film called My Old Ass looks like a case of someone getting their defence in early, but is in fact a canny repositioning of Plaza – more mouth, less sex – and another demonstration of her ability to light up a film with dark snark in a supporting role.
The film actually belongs to Maisy Stella, in her first time out, playing a young Canadian woman – bit snarky, bit dark – who meets her older self after going on a mushroom trip with her friends, in a last hurrah before they all leave their home town for the next phase of their lives.
Shrooms ingested, all three sit around a camp fire and soon, Ro and Ruthie are gurning and wowing with the best of them, while nothing at all seems to be happening to Elliott (Stella), until suddenly, like a genie out of a bottle, her older self is sitting next to her on the log.
Quick introductions and audience questions dealt with – why don’t you two look alike, for example – the two of them get to talking. They get along well, as you might imagine, though the older version of Elliott doesn’t have much of use to say to her younger self. She’s 39 (as Plaza is) and won’t really give away any details about the future, except that Older Elliott is still a student, doing a PhD. Younger Elliott is horrified that someone in their 40s (“30s” squeaks Older Elliott) could still be a student – will her plans for her future all come to naught?
Reassurance not entirely forthcoming, Older Elliott offers up some advice, telling her younger self that she would do well to hang out more with the family she holds at arm’s length. But most of all not, under any circumstances, to get tangled up with anyone called Chad.
Next day dawns, the log fire has died down, there’s no sign of Older Elliott. Except she has left her phone number on her younger self’s phone – under My Old Ass – and, for reasons to do with movie quantum dynamics, the younger version can call and text her.
Chad, fairly obviously, is soon on the scene, a likeable dude working a summer job on Elliott’s family’s cranberry farm, and he and her have soon met-cute in a skinny-dipping scene in a lake. It is indeed very cute though there’s no way in hell that Elliott’s going to have feelings for Chad, because she’s only into girls.
There you go, that’s your set-up. Elliott is going to learn a few things about herself and her sexuality, re-connect with the family, form a liaison with Chad, of some sort, and things will either work out or not.
There’s no point in me telling you which way it goes. Watch the movie. It’s worth it. But don’t watch it expecting much in the way of Aubrey Plaza. She’s largely a disembodied voice at the end of a phone line, in a future that, from the occasional clue, seems either apocalyptic or pretty close to it.
Instead we’re entirely with the Younger Elliott, a role that Maisy Stella fills up in a performance that’s gorgeously, confidently Generation Alpha – as seen through Gen X eyes – as if she were talking entirely in air quotes and emojis and cultural references. It’s absolutely 100 per cent winning. Instant star stuff.
Percy Hynes White is also pretty winning as the boyishly charming, diffidently confident Chad, over whom there is a question mark. Why shouldn’t Elliott pal about with him? Is he going to break her heart? Do something worse?
This is Gen X-er Megan Park’s second feature as a writer/director after The Fallout, which came out in 2021. She’s done a lot of acting, though, and quite often in films with Christmas in the title – A Royal Queens Christmas for example – a Hallmark offering.
Hallmark with a twist is what Park is serving up here. A bright, clean and squeaky-looking film set in rural Canada, where living next to a big lake looks like the finest existence that could be offered to humanity. Elliott’s family are a Hallmark family. Hard-working Dad, homely Mom, two brothers, one antsy the other cute.
Hallmark aren’t so big on sex, drug-taking and same-sex romping but they are pretty keen on decent human values, which is really the message here. Love your family, love the person in front of you. You’ll be old one day (“30s!”) and the world might have gone a bit apocalyptic. In short – don’t take it all for granted
My Old Ass – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
