As much as I enjoy Doc Brown’s explanation of the flux capacitor and the need to reach a speed of 88 mph and 1.21 gigawatts and all that jazz in “Back to the Future,” there comes a time in every movie about someone time traveling and/or meeting a younger or older version of themselves when we must decide whether or not to just to go with it and not get bogged down in the mechanics. After all, the science doesn’t actually exist, at least not yet. Right?
One of things I love about writer-director Megan Park’s funny and smart and heart-tugging sci-fi comedy/drama/romance “My Old Ass” is there’s no attempt to explain how it’s possible for 18-year-old Elliott Labrant (Maisy Stella) to come face-to-face (and later phone-to-phone) with her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). It simply …. happens.
To celebrate her birthday, Elliott camps out in the woods and ingests hallucinogenic mushrooms with her best friends Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks), and ping! Just like that, Older Elliott materializes. Over the last days of the summer before Elliott leaves her small-town Canada life and the family’s cranberry farm for college in Toronto, she periodically connects with her future self (played by Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott urges her to appreciate her mother (Maria Dizzia) and to spend time with her younger brothers Max (Seth Isaac Johnson) and Spencer (Carter Trozzolo). Most important of all, Elliott should stay away from anyone named Chad.
Of course, that’s the cue for the arrival of new summer worker on the family farm named … Chad (Percy Hynes White). He’s a long-haired, free-spirited, quirky and almost impossibly sweet guy, and though Elliott has always identified as gay, she finds herself attracted to and maybe even falling in love with Chad.
Here is a film that dabbles in fantasy yet gets everything right about that fleeting summer when you’re between the end of your youth and the beginnings of adulthood. Maisy Stella, Kerrice Brooks and Maddie Ziegler expertly convey the dynamic of longtime best friends. Elliott has a sweet nature, but she’s also at that age where she’ll casually blow off her family’s birthday party for her in order to hang with friends. The sun-dappled, almost magical romance between Elliott and Chad has the magical feeling of that first profound love.
What a sharp and insightful and nuanced script by Park, e.g., a beautiful monologue right out of “Our Town” when Chad talks about how when we’re kids and we play silly pretend games with our friends for the last time, we don’t know it’s the last time: “You….parked your bike in the garage and went to bed, not realizing that was the last time you were ever going to get to do that.”
Oh man. Tell me that doesn’t hit home with you. “My Old Ass” starts as a time-travel comedy and evolves into a more serious drama and ends on just the right note. I’m about to use a word that, like time travel, doesn’t actually exist, but this is the cryingest movie of 2024, and I mean that in the best way possible.