One of the hardest parts about aging is thinking of everything you could have done, everything you should have done. But chasing the future or staring back into the past is no way to live. All we have is now. This simple yet profound message pushes Megan Park’s coming-of-age drama into being perhaps the most charming movie of the summer. It’s about Elliott, a teenager on the verge of leaving her small farming community to attend college in the big city. As part of her sendoff, she takes shrooms with her best friends and ends up having a conversation with her older self who warns her, no matter what, to avoid falling in love with a guy named Chad. This piece of advice changes the trajectory of not just Elliott’s summer, but her entire life. Every bit as laugh-inducing as the trailer would have you believe, I was most impressed by how it turns the typical time travel narrative on its head. Instead of focusing on how we can change the future, Park’s film emphasizes how doing so is a fool’s errand. All these mistakes and risks make us who we are. Life may be a fleeting, imperfect, tender thing, but much like this film, it’s a gift.
As with any film in this genre, chemistry is a central aspect of why this movie works so much. Aubrey Plaza may not look like the older version of Maisy Stella, but you forget that almost instantly. They have such an organic rapport that never feels hollow, and are able to play off each other to great effect, which says a lot about Stella’s abilities considering Plaza’s now iconic status. The same can be said of Stella and Percy Hynes White, who plays Chad. Particularly toward the film’s end, viewers are guaranteed to become so enamored with the way these two characters interact, and Park leaves plenty of room for viewers to really get acquainted with Elliott.
I do wish we got to see her reconciling with those around her, taking her older self’s advice and ultimately realizing she’s taken her family for granted—as all 18-year-olds are prone to. Instead, the film only finds time to include a handful of these scenes along with a montage. I think that speaks more to modern editing sensibilities than anything else, having to always make stories quicker and more efficient instead of allowing audiences to luxuriate in the worlds filmmakers are creating. Nevertheless, we get a great sense of how it feels to leave home behind, being unsure what the future holds but having to find the bravery to be young and dumb enough to believe it’ll somehow work out.
This sense of fleeting beauty is present even in the visuals. The cinematography is naturalistic for the most part, but there’s one scene where Plaza traveling back in time allows her to see a dead loved one for the first time in what we assume is a while that is a stunning display of camera work and acting. She steals the screen any time she’s on, using an emotional range that her fans might not be used to, but that suits her greatly. Switching to handheld in certain scenes allows for a layer of subjectivity to be injected into the image, making us feel more emotionally connected to what we’re watching. Similarly, the music does a great job of setting mood and tone without overwhelming the scene.
Park mentioned in an interview that this film was deeply inspired by her childhood summers, and that sense of nostalgia comes through beautifully in how the landscape is photographed. The sunlight reflecting off the lake at just the right angle, people walking through fields of high grass; this is a movie deeply grounded in a sense of place and in the daily life of a small-town, using such mundanity to remind us that there’s no need to look to the future, or the past. There’s so much magic and whimsy and love in our life right now, in this very moment. My Old Ass hits theaters September 13th, and I hope you go watch it. It’s one of those special movies that has the potential to change your perspective on everyday life, and I think that’s the kind of film everyone could use once in a while.
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