MY OLD ASS (2024)
A free-spirited young woman takes a psychedelic journey that leads her to confront her future self.
A free-spirited young woman takes a psychedelic journey that leads her to confront her future self.
Teen comedies aren’t the most welcome of genres when we speak of film as an art. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1988), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Mean Girls (2004), Superbad (2007), (500) Days of Summer (2009), and so many of their kind have this terrible tendency towards caricaturist over-exaggeration that even their makers often fail to see in them any more “art” than plain entertainment. But it should not be so, if the joie de vivre and intelligence of Election (1999), Lady Bird (2017), and now, Megan Park’s My Old Ass, were any proof.
Maisy Stella, with blonde hair casually worn, has a thick nose, a pointed chin, a wide cheek shaped like a heart, and a far-from-slim physique: the Canadian Florence Pugh. As Elliott the lesbian country girl with a week left before she heads for freshman year college, she inadvertently misses her family’s celebration party and goes on a mushroom trip to Maude Island with her friends—Ruthie and Ro, played by Maddie Ziegler the TikTok dancer who, with double-lid eyes drunken and a face slightly mewed, is like a reincarnation of Sharon Tate from Valley of the Dolls (1967), and Kerrice Brooks, who has her own fan base and dance moves that have a Nicki Minaj zing to them—and this is where the film introduces its gimmick: while tripping, she summoned her future, middle-age self, who stays with her for the rest of the film in the back (and front) of her mind.
The movie itself is not a thought-out success like Zoe Eisenberg’s Chaperone (2024)—without a doubt the best and the most daring American comedy this year, which so far has received criminally little distribution and publicity—but it takes such courage now to try to elevate schlock into a work of art that also doesn’t shy away from cheap sentimentality and life lessons, that Megan Park may just be the most promising traditional comedy writer-director from this country at this moment in time. She’s found a way to keep the saccharin from overflowing, too. That same mushiness that the wholesale comedies of Gary Winick and the Farrelly Brothers thrived on doesn’t eclipse everything else in this charmer of a coming-of-age story. It doesn’t break any ground exactly, but it walks such an elegant feat of a high-wire walk between syrupy corn and brisk repartee; it patters and ripens in its simplicity. Come out of the credits fast with your enraptured friends, lest your hearts flow away.
There is one problem: not enough Aubrey Plaza. The whole thing doesn’t start and end with her, but there’s something so sure-fired in her timing, movement, and expressions that her flair of self-awareness doesn’t fizzle out and evaporate like it so often does when other comedians try to impress you with the same gags. You register the millennial irony from her thick-eyebrow nonchalance and her older-sister girlishness, that you know she’s gonna make fireworks out of an overused joke or a trite dialogue; it’s her whole schtick. One glance out the corner of her eye and she’s got you stunned. The only certainty of feeling is when she smiles or rolls her eyes.
Emerging out of the world of improv theatre and sketch comedy of Upright Citizens Brigade, Plaza shines the brightest when she interacts and sparks others in the main cast, or when she presents herself as a commenter on the relatively self-unaware heroes or heroines. She hasn’t had many leading roles because of her perceived talent as a comic relief, despite her fame. My Old Ass doesn’t change that, but Megan Park, once a theatre kid herself, knows just how to use her to her fullest economically: she appears only in two scenes and was heard on the phone in a few more.
Playing the older Elliott, Plaza is the spark that’s needed to make the fire. By matching the school-girl rhythm of her younger co-star, she makes the contrast between her character and Stella’s younger Elliott scintillating. She may have a larger role when she’s not on screen: the way her character is conceived and designed, the threat of her appearing out of nowhere is titillating. As much as the cast of Zoomer brats here may impress you with their unbelievable spontaneity, though, you wish that she had a much larger presence. Park banks on her lack of screen time to keep her fresh in our eyes, which works to a limit. She hasn’t reached the point where the returns start to diminish, and she could’ve used a lot more. Plaza’s charm is so satisfying that all you want is more.
Like Jenna Ortega in Park’s debut The Fallout (2021), singer-turned-actress Maisy Stella is dashing and spirited in her bounciness, and her sensitivity is all her own. Every time she lets her boat bump into something, the whole theatre were goners; and when she and her friends onscreen giggled, we giggled with them. Overcoming her disbelief at seeing her older self “summoned”, she leans up close to Aubrey and surveys her as if she were a mildly dumbfounded lab animal. It’s amazing seeing how much of a jolly “bright sunshine” personality she’s got. You sense that in their dynamic, Plaza was the one who was trying to catch up. She must have been so infected by Stella’s vibrant aura that she decided to just let it wash over her.
It cannot be understated how much Park’s improvisatory approach and convivial environment on set lent to the zest and the humour here. With how an obscene amount of takes Stanley Kubrick or David Fincher would drive out of their actors in a single sequence before moving on, it generally gives off the impression that improv is worlds easier. It isn’t so, necessarily. It’s not as simple as “do whatever you want and however you wish”: the foundation has to be there. Without tacit understanding and congenial chemistry between the performers themselves, as well as between them and the filmmakers, and sometimes between them and the technical crew too, no one can find an opening to take off, no matter how much you let loose the freedom of creative choice.
Knowing how different a wavelength everyone in the same setting can be, and knowing how much of a problem it is to organise them behind a general vision without it turning competitive or autocratic, that collaborative spirit and mutual trust are in fact as hard to come by as gold dust. The very socioeconomics of it can become such a hassle for filmmakers who do not wish to engage themselves with their actors, that they pretty much go the easy route of imposing their vision and directions onto their cast, and expect something will come out of the seasoned, award-winning actors they hire, and the gazillion takes.
It’s all the luckier for Park that Stella, an untrained natural, has the confidence that Elliott has and the instinct the role requires, especially since there’s no other way to bring a new actor to life than to rely on improv. You can tell that Megan Park came from the pastel world of teen shows and sitcoms of the 2000s. She couldn’t have thought up this many hormonal gags, trippy bits, and media references without extensive use of ad-libs and input from her young cast, but she knows her own Spice Girls dance moves and in-jokes when she was their age to understand how to make them tick. There’s not a laugh between these teenyboppers that sounds like anything else than something you’d hear in college bars and house parties; not a wisecrack that sounds scripted or conceited, like rascals sounding all smart and tough; not an expression or hand gesture that looks even remotely operatic or studied, as if such naturalness is only a matter of method mimicry. The only falseness reveals itself in the soppy scenes involving the parents.
Park knows better than to dwell on drama. It makes sense that the narrative focus barely stayed on the parents, for they are so sloppily characterised that the best they could offer is the awkward, alienated stereotypes you see in standard genre pieces, perfunctorily supporting the plot and the teenage protagonists’ developments. In the scene where Elliott’s mom (Maria Dizzia) wants to get across to her daughter how much she will miss her, she is so harmlessly maudlin and lovingly bland that you would think it would only validate Elliott’s tedium. And she uses the oldest pitch in the book: “Remember how when you were this little, you this or that… So proud of you, because you no longer this or that… but I also miss doing this or that while you needed me…”
It may not have been the best idea to cast someone whose quality and background are primarily theatrical, which does not mesh well with what we have been seeing and hearing. It gives your game away, as we are jarred by the hunch that we are watching two different films: Stella and her friends’, and Dizzia’s. I would guess it has something to do with Park lacking the confidence in portraying the elders when she didn’t have the childrearing experience to substantiate them meaningfully (her eldest offspring was born in 2019). As such, many conflicts and characters were set up, but there were no follow-throughs, like how Elliott suddenly found herself frustrated at her parents’ decision to sell the bog, which turned into a dramatic dead end.
But the picture’s warmth and heartiness get to you. How Park came up with the title is beyond me, but the idea of it—a conversation with your older self—started when nostalgia (and maybe a little bit of postpartum depression) had finally kicked in during her stay at her Canadian hometown amid the pandemic, at which time she was in her mid-thirties. The shroom trip is but a device to circumvent science fiction and needless explanation, so she is freer to engage the two selves in conversations without much forethought as to how it “should” work. It is pointless interpreting how older Elliott could be seen when younger Elliott was not tripping, or why someone else could also see her when she was supposed to be a figment of her young self’s imagination, or how they could be on the phone with each other even though they belong to different times. “Hail folly,” for reason is the enemy of comedy!
The greatest jeopardy for Park now as an artist is a potential complacency in formulas. Once a director has gotten a hold of their pace, they either try to outdo themselves and break and bank—D.W Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), Erich von Stroheim’s 10-hour cut of Greed (1924), Sergei Eisenstein’s trilogy of Ivan the Terrible (1944-1958), Bernardo Bertolucci’s five-hour epic 1900 (1976), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Sergio Leone’s four-hour Once Upon a Time in America (1984)—or (and this tends to be more common with comedy directors) retread old ground and try to find something new with each repetition—Yasujirō Ozu, Frank Capra, Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, Mel Brooks, Joe Dante, the Farrelly Brothers. What raises alarms about the two films that Megan’s done is in how the character types in one of them, their roles, their parlance, and their personalities, parallel with their counterpart in her other one.
Seeing Percy Hynes White jumping up and down in his positive masculine glow as Chad, you cannot help but think back to Will Ropp in The Fallout where he gives off that same semblance of a considerate yet playful, mellifluous dream boy: the real-life, positive masculine variation on Twilight‘s Edward Cullen. This is even more so the case with Maisy Stella and Jenna Ortega respectively as the generally sanguine, callow leading girls. Following the thread we’re leading, a pattern emerges, and you cannot help but suspect also that Aubrey Plaza’s older Elliott is but a twist on Maddie Ziegler’s Mia in The Fallout, for our heroines to become fascinated and go closer together with. The strained and sidelined elder characters are there as well in both films, even though Ortega’s Vada and her dad’s impassioned cries on the side of a hill—where the confused frustration in the swear words gradually lead into more reasoned and heartfelt confessions—was the most genuinely cheerful of all the emotional let outs I’ve seen (take notes, Todd Phillips and Coralie Fargeat!).
At the end of the day (or night), who can blame them for feeling their oats? Maisy Stella’s imitation of Justin Bieber’s “One Less Lonely Girl” is about as uproariously gonzo as Jenna Ortega’s zonking out in ecstasy and Lolo Zouaï’s “Brooklyn Love”, exploding a pen in her mouth, and “drowning” on the school stairs like she’s the goldfish phasing out of their tank into freedom and jumping carnally. It usually takes some time before a generation’s experience, parlance, etiquettes, in-jokes, and styles are translated on screen, especially now that young viewers increasingly learn their behaviours and speaking rhythms of their peers from social media and anime rather than those of their parents in shows and movies. Millennials born in the 1980s and 1990s only found their distinctive, irony-ridden voice in media towards the 2000s. Seeing Aubrey Plaza or Bill Hader in their roles when they were at their peaks, you notice one set of tones and tempos, and seeing Jenna Ortega and Maisy Stella’s, you get a similar feel and attitude, but more on the fly and off the cuff. As Gen Z matures out of their adolescence, The Fallout and My Old Ass are to be the artistic hallmarks of their generation.
CANADA • USA | 2024 | 89 MINUTES | COLOUR | ENGLISH
writer & director: Megan Park.
starring: Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler, Kerrice Brooks & Aubrey Plaza.