My Old Ass: Texting-Across-Time Sets Up a Funny and Tender First-Love Story

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-plus

I expect everyone who’s lived long enough for regret has pondered the notion of giving advice to their younger selves. If it were possible, it would likely be a bad idea (though a heads-up from old me to buy Google stock would have been appreciated).

Still, as a premise it’s irresistible. And Megan Park’s funny and touching My Old Ass brings a fresh twist to a mystically-assisted two-way generational life lesson that, in the movies, has usually involved switching bodies.

Elliott (Mais Stella) trades life notes with her future self (Aubrey Plaza) in My Old Ass.

Certainly, how it happens here is fresh. In My Old Ass, unashamedly set in Canada (Muskoka to be exact), 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) is getting set to move from the family farm to university in Toronto. Thoughtless and dismissive to her parents and brothers (and to the farm itself), she bails on her own birthday party to camp out on an island with two friends and take magic mushrooms.

As each pursues their separate stoned adventure, she sits alone, but not alone. As the mushrooms kick in, she is joined by a 39-year-old version of herself (played by Aubrey Plaza), who is amused by Elliott’s wide-eyed expectations about her future. The conversation is loose and light, with some reasonable requests to treat her family nicer, until “Old Ass” Elliott strikes a cautionary note. If you meet a guy named Chad, have nothing to do with him.

This meet-up seems unlikely, since Elliott has already self-identified as same-sex (and has a fling going with an older local woman). But the very next day, she does indeed meet a guy named Chad (Percy Hynes White). And gender fluidity seems to be in the cards.

Except that the older Elliott has also used their time together to type her phone number in her younger self’s smart-phone contacts. So, it is that our Elliott is able to text the future (though physical contact can only be accomplished if one or both versions of her are high. Hey, I didn’t make the rules).

There are many ways, this set-up could have gone. It could have been antic, with then-and-now paradoxes, timeline changes and more amusing jibes at naivete and saggy old age (the latter referring to Aubrey Plaza, which just seems wrong). 

Instead, Park uses the past-future I/M (Plaza only has a few scenes in front of the camera) to frame a deeply affecting story of first-love that resists all outside efforts to derail it. (Including frantic texts and phonecalls from the future, and at least one hands-on personal visit).

So, in a wise choice of narrative focus, Park narrows My Old Ass to one question. What is so wrong with Chad that it merits warning about him across time and space? Or rather, what is so wrong with Elliott falling in love with Chad?

Rather than casting an obvious heart-throb, Park also chose wisely with White, who plays Chad as lanky, goofy (but smart), and patient enough to wait out Elliott’s initial rebuffs with jokes and endearing awkwardness.

This is not to say that the director resists having some silly fun with her premise. Example: After the give-and-take between young and Old-Ass Elliott, there is another mushroom scene that fails to connect the two, but does involve a Justin Bieber hallucination.

If you’re the “I’m not crying, you’re crying!” type, be warned that, in the last act, there will be waterworks. My Old Ass, is ultimately a well-played and portrayed first-love romance, at a level Nicholas Sparks wishes he could pull off.

My Old Ass. Written and directed by Megan Park. Starring Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza and Percy Hynes White. Opens In select theatres September 20 and everywhere on September 27.