My Old Ass

Aubrey Plaza is having a prolific fall. She has a lead role in a $120 million movie written and directed by the great Francis Ford Coppola and that’s not even the best film in which she can currently be seen. That title would belong to My Old Ass, a romantic dramedy from actress-turned-filmmaker Megan Park (2022’s The Fallout).

Plaza has a supporting role as the older version of the protagonist, who comes to her during an end-of-high-school camping and mushroom trip with her best friends. Teenaged Elliott (Maisy Stella) notes the modest physical resemblance her supposed 39-year-old self bears to her, an acknowledgment of the challenges of casting two actors to play the same person at different ages. But My Old Ass isn’t breaking the fourth wall or dabbling in body swap comedy. It consistently subverts any expectations you can assign to it.

Eighteen-year-old Elliott is enjoying her last summer break before college when her older self coyly shows up to drop some caution and wisdom. Older Elliott advises younger Elliott to stay away from a boy named Chad she hasn’t yet met. Soon enough, she does: he (Percy Hynes White) is working at Elliott’s family’s cranberry bog and causes younger Elliott to question her homosexuality. Although she looks closely for red flags, teen Elliott doesn’t spot any and thus her older self’s warnings are largely set aside.

That older self, who had been inexplicably reachable by text and phone call, disappears from the picture, turning the film into a more routine, contemporary coming-of-age summer of self-discovery film. Despite the giggle-inducing title, My Old Ass proves to be more sincere than silly, as it tries to make sense of its heroine’s complicated and evolving feelings. Elliott juggles her first straight romance with a concerted effort to spend more time with her parents and two brothers, something her older self strongly encouraged.

For a movie that opens with fantastical hallucinogens, the second feature from Park has a firm grip on reality and a deep understanding of what it’s like to look back at one’s formative years with perspective and hindsight. It is a surprisingly touching and heartfelt film whose comic fantasy angle disarms you enough to let its stealthy insight sink in.

While Park’s feature debut The Fallout went straight to what was then called HBO Max near the beginning of 2022, My Old Ass has been slowly rolling out in theaters eight months after Amazon MGM Studios dished out $15 million to acquire worldwide distribution rights for this Sundance crowd-pleaser. After two weeks in limited release, the film expands to a modest 1,390 theater count today, the same day that Plaza’s Megalopolis debuts in 1,854 theaters to much more intense scrutiny.

Although My Old Ass itself has a long way to go to turning a profit, it will no doubt attract notice when it comes to Prime later this year. But the film is rewarding enough to recommend that you do not wait to watch it at home. A My Old Ass/Megalopolis double feature would make for both a mini Aubrey Plaza film festival to remember and a way to reward original filmmaking in an age when that has become increasingly hard to find.