My Old Ass

Directed by Megan Park, My Old Ass follows Maisy Stella’s Elliott as she encounters her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) while tripping on mushrooms. It’s an out-there premise that is, surprisingly enough, employed as a springboard for a gentle coming-of-age drama by Park, as the filmmaker, armed with her own screenplay, delivers a deliberately-paced yet consistently engrossing endeavor that’s focused on Elliott’s summertime exploits before heading off to college – with the emphasis placed largely on the character’s appealing friendship/romance with Percy Hynes White’s Chad. And while the thin narrative admittedly does suffer from one or two lulls, with this particularly true of a fairly silly digression involving a Justin Bieber singalong, My Old Ass has been suffused with a number of unexpectedly touching and heartfelt interludes (eg a tear-jerking conversation between Elliott and her mother) that, coupled with Stella’s impressively lived-in, captivating performance, effectively compensate for its few (and easy-to-overlook) missteps – with the end result a superb piece of work that bodes well for Park’s future directorial efforts.

***1/2 out of ****