If you met your older self, what would you want to know about your life? Do you get married and have children? What’s the next Apple or Google? Are you happy? These are some of the questions going through the mind of 18-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella, TV’s NASHVILLE) when she meets her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza, EMILY THE CRIMINAL) while tripping on some mushroom tea. The experience couldn’t come at a more tumultuous time in young Elliott’s life in the quirky coming-of-age film MY OLD ASS.

With summer coming to an end, Elliott is trying to wrap up loose ends before she heads off to university. One of those loose ends involves acting on her attraction to a young woman who works at a coffee shop in the lakeside town near her family’s cranberry farm. After ticking that box, she and her besties, Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks), go off camping in the nearby woods, leaving her family to celebrate her 18th birthday without her. When Elliott meets her older self, the only pieces of advice she is given is to be nicer to her family and to stay away from Chad. The problem with that, though, is that Elliott doesn’t know any Chads… at least not yet. When she does meet him, she can’t figure out why the older Elliott wants her to stay away from him. Chad (Percy Hynes White, TV’s WEDNESDAY) is smart, funny and even a little hot in a goofy sort of way. Fortunately, old Elliott put her name and number into young Elliott’s phone. Now if only she’d pick up her messages.

I’ll admit to having a slight bias towards this film as it was shot in Ontario’s Muskoka region, the cottage country located a few hours by car north of Toronto where I spent many summer weekends in my younger days. I didn’t know about the cranberry farms that are there though. Location aside, MY OLD ASS is a delightful little film with warm performances from the young cast of relative unknowns. (Plaza is always fun to watch. That’s just a given.) The dialogue, by writer-director Megan Park (THE FALLOUT), is a brilliant balance of youthful exuberance and insecurity. While young Elliott’s thoughts are only about leaving that place and getting on with life, old Elliott’s advice forces her to think about what kind of adult she wants to be.

Park, in only her second feature, shows great empathy towards her characters. She doesn’t dwell too long on the fantastic element of the story, instead focusing on young Elliott’s metamorphosis. Perhaps the story could have done with more Aubrey Plaza but we can say that about everything she’s in.

MY OLD ASS premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January. It is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video. Check it out.

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