"My Old Ass" Review: A Charming, Inventive Coming-of-Age Tale

Megan Park's new dramedy offers moving insights on life, love, and growing up.

October 31, 2024

If you graduated middle school (and considering half the population will vote for an orange, bigoted, mentally defective convicted felon to be the leader of the free world, assuming this is a dangerous assumption), you likely wrote a letter to your older self about keeping the optimism of youth, with all its boundless energy, ceaseless self-belief, and unjaded yearning to explore the world.

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Of course, there are two sides to this coin. For all we have to learn as we reflect, we gain just as much by looking forward. It’s the question we ask ourselves when our lives capsize: if we could do it all again, what would we do differently?

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My Old Ass, the new, poorly-titled dramedy from writer-director Megan Park, poses this question in a more unorthodox way than most. The film’s protagonist, lesbian soon-to-be high school graduate Elliott, is your typical teenager: ungrateful, devoid of perspective, and caught up in the now instead of looking toward the later. Before leaving her family’s cranberry farm and small-town life for Toronto, she consumes hallucinogenic tea with her friends. Consequently, she envisions her older self, who proves her identity by revealing an embarrassing physical abnormality. With her older self, listed as “My Old Ass” in her phone, Elliott embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

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Yet, instead of diving into coming-of-age typicality, Park explores life from both ends of the spectrum: just as Elliot gets challenged to perceive life differently by her older self, learning to value her family and home instead of aching to leave it, she similarly challenges her older self’s notions of what it means to truly live. When older Elliot advises her younger self to avoid a guy named “Chad” at all costs, younger Elliot feels spooked upon meeting a young man working for her father with the name. Alas, their connection proves irrepressible, and Elliot separates from the female crush she’d finally snagged to explore her relationship with Chad.

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It poses the ultimate question, even as we remain ignorant of Chad’s role in Elliott’s life and precisely why her older self is so adamant that she avoid him. We don’t (technically) know the why, but we do know that older Elliot feels this way because we’ve felt this way: that loving simply isn’t worth it.

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It’s not the immediate histrionics of a break-up that create that apocalyptic mentality, but everything that leads to it: the emotional investment, the active choice to love despite all fears or reservations, surrendering ourselves to another when our species' entire purpose is self-preservation, etc. Love, just like life, is a process. Thus, love, like life, is a choice we make each day.

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Younger Elliott, unburdened by tragedy, chooses to love and answers whether it’s worth it. By then, the end is known, the means are TBD, but the choice is what matters regardless of how it all ends, and by developing Elliot’s perspective well enough to make her movie’s audience believe that, My Old Ass proves one of the most profound entries in the coming-of-age canon.

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In fact, for all the various ways it moves us and hits at universal ideas, the theme of choice being the most critical part of life is what rings most true. Elliott receives guidance from her older self - and she gets pointed in the right direction once or twice - but she makes every choice, whether to spend time with her family, embrace feelings for a man that conflict with her self-perceived lesbianism, or leave home because that’s the life she decides she wants - not because she’s running away from something, but because she’s finally running to something.

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Ultimately, the little things add up, like the small steps we take and capitalizing on every moment. We can’t just spend time with our loved ones; we must spend quality time with our loved ones. We must ask the right questions and listen, be vulnerable in our responses and reflect. For all the teenage vapidity Elliott displays early on while riding into a dock with her friends and relaying her plans to bed her longtime crush, she possesses soulfulness we all must remind ourselves we have and have always had.

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My Old Ass reminds us that this trait isn’t just for learning from our mistakes or planning for our future but to use every phase of life to be our best selves. Elliot listens to her older self as often as she combats her, frantically seeking her guidance as much as she questions it. Trusting yourself is the most important thing we can do in life; it’s about time a coming-of-age movie gives a protagonist, the person a generation of people should empathize with and relate to, the chance to do precisely that.

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Of course, My Old Ass has many subtle strengths, like the supportive friend who immediately embraces her buddy’sshifting sexuality instead of throwing a self-indulgent fit that pads the runtime with unnecessary drama. Chad may have a typical seasonal work, but his effortless sincerity lets us understand why present Elliot falls so hard and why future Elliot is so terrified of his loss.

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See, we're never unsure what happens to Chad. We never find out how he dies, but seasoned filmgoers will conclude his eventual death immediately. The movie essentially hinges on whether we can want Chad for Elliot as much as she wants him for herself, and its success in this endeavor affirms the importance of choice and following your heart.

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Your head affirms belief, and your gut will guide you based on experience, but that’s why it’s so important to be young when you are young. If you don’t have experience, you have to get some, and the only way is by following your heart. Your heart spends time with your little brothers and tells them you don’t think they’re uncool or embarrassing. Your heart remembers the love of home and that even if one day, whether tomorrow or a decade from now, it’ll hurt like hell, the most important thing in life is love.

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Ultimately, in a more nuanced, insightful way than expected, My Old Ass is about love. No, this is not a novel concept; in many ways, most things are about love somehow, but My Old Ass encapsulates this idea beautifully in its final moments. When older Elliott is incensed at her younger self’s refusal to resist Chad, younger Elliott chastises her for suggesting life not be lived because it might hurt. You have to live. You have to breathe. You have to love.

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So, if you wrote that letter to your older self about self-belief, determination, and conquering all, know that your younger self was right because it is always, always worth it. We love, we lose. We laugh, we cry. We live, we die. The one constant is the choices we make. But the vital nugget of nuance that often gets lost is that much like the moments Elliott shares with her family, friends, and Chad, it’s how we choose that matters most: My Old Ass makes every right choice.