My Old Ass review – a sweet and cathartic coming-of-ages movie with a twist

There are many reasons why Letter to My Younger Self is one of the Big Issue’s most popular and long running features. It encourages self-reflection, thoughtfulness and honesty when they can sometimes seem in short supply. Because the subjects tend to be celebrities – musicians, athletes, politicians and more – it can be a useful reality check. It shows that even people who have achieved dizzying success have regrets or wish they’d done things differently. 

Then there is the daydreaming pleasure of joining in with the premise: what hard-won knowledge would you transmit to yourself to help cope with the challenges you know are on the horizon?

The affecting new teen drama My Old Ass – in context, the title is more affectionate than it looks – is basically Letter to My Younger Self: The Movie. Set during a casually gorgeous summer on the banks of Lake Muskoka in Ontario, it centres around an impatient young woman counting down the days until she can finally ditch her family’s boring old cranberry farm and begin a new college life in the bright lights of Toronto. 

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We first meet Elliott (Maisy Stella) on her 18th birthday messing around in a boat with two gal pals, oblivious to the fact that her parents and younger brothers have gathered at home to present her with a cake. 

Elliott’s celebratory plans are a little more hedonistic: try and hook up with the cute girl at the coffee shop she’s been flirting with all summer, then drink magic mushroom tea with her friends during an under-the-stars sleepover.

Everything on Elliott’s checklist goes swimmingly, although at first the mushrooms don’t seem to be having much of an effect – at least not compared to her babbling friends. Then she notices the woman who has appeared next to her. This is somehow 39-year-old Elliott, played by champion deadpan eye roller Aubrey Plaza, who gets many opportunities to use her gift.

After assuming the hallucinogenic brew has finally kicked in, Elliott peppers her older self with questions – “Do you die, am I dead?” – while questioning that they don’t look particularly alike. Older Elliott is happy to play along but between some light teasing and a touch of melancholy she has two important messages to impart: spend some quality time with your family, and avoid a dude called Chad.

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Next morning Elliott writes it all off as weird trip. But then she has an awkward but amusing encounter with a lanky goofball (Percy Hynes White) who is clearly interested in her. When she finds out his name is Chad it sends her into a tailspin; thank goodness, then, that Older Elliott is somehow available to call and text on her mobile. The realisation that her vision quest was real makes Elliott double down on following the advice of her older self. That means trying to bond with her younger brothers – one a preppy golf nerd, the other an unexpected cinephile – and reconnecting with the mom she has long taken for granted. But trying to avoid contact with the cheerful Chad, who is working on her family farm, proves a little trickier.

Written and directed by Megan Park (whose own younger self was an actor in US drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager 15 years or so ago), My Old Ass does not feel the need to explains its fantastical premise. Emotions are foregrounded, and it helps that Elliott and her friends are from a generation seemingly used to talking more openly about their feelings.

It also taps into the illicit thrill of making bad decisions – which, essentially, is what being a teenager is all about – and is warm and witty in a way that feels much more natural compared to the reference-heavy, rat-a-tat patter of most comedies about teens. Stella, in her film debut, does a remarkable job of making Elliott a bolshy, charismatic, plausibly exasperating young woman.

For all its grounded setting, there is one surreal flight of fancy involving a surprise needle drop that feels all the more charming for seeming to come out of nowhere. 

It helpfully buoys the film just before things get a little more serious as the end of summer looms. But overall it is an understated, cathartic delight: a sweet coming-of-ages movie that has something useful to tell the 18-year-old – or 39-year-old – in all of us. 

My Old Ass is in cinemas from 27 September. Graeme Virtue is a film and TV critic.

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