What would you do if you met your older self? What would you want to know? And what if that older version of you was Aubrey Plaza? Sounds like heaven right? That’s the tantalising premise of Megan Park’s coming-of-age flick My Old Ass.
Elliott (Maisy Stella) is a precocious queer 18-year-old gearing up to leave her small Canadian town and start college at the end of the summer. She’s confident and sassy, which is why celebrating her birthday with a shroom-fuelled camping trip alongside her two best friends (including Dance Moms star Maddie Ziegler) seems like a sound idea. Except, unlike your typical shrooms trip, Elliott meets her ‘old ass’ 39-year-old self, played by Plaza, amid the haze.
From there, things get even more complicated as she meets Chad (Wednesday’s Percy Hynes White) and her nonchalant attitude toward her hometown starts to evolve with her new-found romantic feelings. My Old Ass plays with those romcom clichés, subverting them with a boy-meets-lesbian storyline and loads of quippy dialogue – even if some of the characters are a little two-dimensional.
The Gen Z romcom comes into its own here
That rings especially true for Elliott, who never quite delivers the complexities that come with being a queer woman. While her drug-induced confession that she wanted to be Justin Bieber when she was younger is funny, it’s an all-too-easy way of giving her a queer backstory – especially since the main love interest is a man.
Despite the sci-fi premise, the film presents as more of a Gen Z romcom. It’s a genre often, and unfairly, given the straight-to-streaming treatment, but that comes into its own here. Don’t expect too many boundaries to be pushed – that’s not Park’s intention here – but settle in for plenty of big laughs and relatable truths.
In Australian cinemas now and UK cinemas Sep 27.