It had to happen eventually: Aubrey Plaza’s latest vehicle is a comparably lightweight comic feel-gooder. It’s called My Old Ass, and despite its cheeky title it changes everything we thought we knew about one of the most distinctive personalities on the entertainment scene.
In writer-director Megan Park’s well-paced, thoughtfully constructed little tale of a teenage girl named Elliott (played by Maisy Stella) and her mystical encounter with herself at age 39 (Plaza), My Old Ass deviates considerably from the standard Plaza playbook.
Instead of a slippery credit-card-scam operative (Emily the Criminal), a lusty nun getting into sexual high jinks in a medieval Italian convent (The Little Hours) or a young woman who rises from the dead with mischief on her mind (Life After Beth), Plaza’s Older Elliott is more of a fairy godmother dedicated to helping her younger self—they interact with each other in real time—over the rough patches of growing up.
Missing from this kinder, gentler Plaza characterization are the actor’s trademark snarky facial expressions and dismissive dialogue. In their place is something like the new maternally minded Plaza presence, helpfully pointing out the dangers her younger self now faces for the first time. Plaza’s new tack is surprisingly gratifying, even though longtime fans may be left wondering when the dagger is finally going to come out.
The Older Elliott appears to the younger in the midst of a magic mushroom trip the teenager is taking with her girlfriend Ro (Kerrice Brooks) near Elliott’s family’s summer place on a gorgeous New England lake—actually shot on location in Ontario, Canada.
That outdoorsy setting brings out the best in our protagonist, who’s facing nothing more threatening than the choice of whether or not to fall in love with Chad (Percy Hynes White), the area’s “summer boy” caretaker. It’s a proposition on which Older Elliott has definite opinions. And therein hangs filmmaker Park’s beguilingly naturalistic story.
The fact that the two actors don’t even slightly resemble each other never comes up. Younger Elliott is shown to be bisexual, or maybe gay/bi-curious. Her playful getting-to-know-you scenes with Chad are among the sweetest, least forced-looking romantic moments on any screen in the pre-holiday season.
My Old Ass has the same joys and tentative self-consciousness—of the awakening promise of love and life—European film fans have admired in the coming-of-age films of Eric Rohmer (A Summer’s Tale, The Green Ray). With a major assist from Park’s screenplay, actor Stella, best known for her work on TV’s Nashville series, takes a potentially cliché-ridden situation and turns it into pure human delight.
The fact that Plaza’s ghostly Older Elliott only occasionally pops up in the foreground is remarkable in itself. The time-tested prickly spirit of the older actor—her arched eyebrows, her quick putdowns, her snippy vocal delivery—plays only a very selective part in the larger story, the one about young Elliott finding her footing.
Our youthful seeker of love suddenly develops—from a shroom high on a hot summer night’s campout—new eyes for the world opening up all around her. And as she awakens, so does Park’s deftly painted portrait of the possibility of happiness, this despite the dialogue’s repeated references to the rapidly dying planet. My Old Ass is an 88-minute vision of stubborn hope.
Stella and Plaza’s scenes together are reason enough to celebrate, but Park’s scene-setting and repartee also shine brightly when the supporting players speak up. The teenage Elliott’s mother (Maria Dizzia) and willful brother (Seth Isaac Johnson) amiably fill in the portrait of an ordinary family who live on a cranberry farm. Young Elliott’s girlfriends (especially Brooks, but also Maddie Ziegler) offer the young-adult Greek chorus this sort of story thrives on. And White’s Chad, a young man blessed with an old man’s face, proves a worthy twin catalyst alongside Plaza’s Older Elliott. My Old Ass is the most pleasant surprise of the late summer.
Opens Sept. 26 at Pruneyard Dine-In Cinemas, AMC theaters in San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga and Sunnyvale, and Cinemark theaters in Milpitas, San Jose and Redwood City.
