Movie Review: ‘My Old Ass’ Asks If You’re Really Smarter Than Your Younger Self

Opening night at the CinemaQ Film Festival is my favorite night, particularly because I love the fact that Keith Garcia likes to start the festival on a comedy whenever possible. Last year, opening night introduced me to Bottoms, which is now absolutely one of my top five favorite films. So I was excited for this year, especially because the opening night film was My Old Ass, the new Aubrey Plaza film which is set to open nationwide next month. Plus, CinemaQ always seems to make the opening night party as vegan-friendly as possible, and this year was no different. So it was a great party with a great movie and absolutely outstanding food all around, making for a spectacular opening to my favorite festival.

This year’s catering was by vegetarian/vegan caterer SRYBB, who I had already been told had some great treats. Both of OFM‘s co-owners, Maggie Phillips and Addison Herron-Wheeler, gave me a heads up that SRYBB has amazing chorizo. While I agree that the chorizo was great, it didn’t even compare to the sloppy joe mix, which was outstanding. Plus there was the chili oil breadsticks, which were great. The pizza had dairy so I couldn’t try it, but based on how good everything else was, I’m sure it was delicious.

Plus, to celebrate the 16^th anniversary of CinemaQ, they had cupcakes from vegan, black-owned, trans-owned bakery Playhaus Bakery. I tried the death by chocolate cupcake as well as the pink champagne one, and the very thickly applied frosting was absolutely creamy and thick and just utterly delicious. You couldn’t tell that it was vegan at all. If I had to make a criticism it’s that I wasn’t as crazy about the texture of the cupcake itself as I was with the icing, but overall it was just yummy. Playhaus came back on Sunday to sell some more baked goods, and I had a frosted donut that I couldn’t believe was vegan, either.

OK, onto My Old Ass. In this movie, we meet Elliot Labrant (Maisy Stella), a lesbian-identified girl who, on her 18^th birthday, celebrates by taking an epic dose of mushrooms which, somehow, brings her in contact with her future self at 39 years old (Aubrey Plaza). Older Elliott gives her younger self advice to avoid anyone named Chad. But, when younger Elliott meets Chad (Percy Hynes White) in real life and finds herself falling in love with a boy for the first time, she suddenly realizes that taking her older self’s advice is harder than she expected.

When I first heard about this movie, I did hear it described as being about queer characters. But when I watched the trailer, I thought maybe the first people I heard talking about it were mistaken about the movie being queer because the trailer didn’t seem to be very queer-content-heavy.

Now that I look back on the trailer after seeing the movie, I see they did leave in one scene where a disinterested Young Elliott is fooling around with another woman, but it is a very quick scene which only shows the back of the other woman’s head, so I guess I didn’t realize that was a queer scene when I first watched the trailer. The trailer also has the scene where Young Elliot asks Older Elliott if they can kiss, but does wanting to kiss yourself count as a homosexual act? I think that’s debatable. So overall, I didn’t feel like the trailer and other promotional materials really represented how queer this movie is.

The premise of this movie is so charming that you find yourself willing to suspend your disbelief and pretend that Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza look like the same person at different ages when they very clearly don’t. However, any lack of similarity between the two actresses is more than made up for by the fact that Stella and Plaza play off each other so well. Both actresses put in excellent individual performances, but Plaza and Stella do a great job of playing the roles of the annoying, idealistic teenager and the annoyed, jaded, middle-aged adult. There’s a climactic scene at the end of the movie between Plaza and Stella where the two actresses have pretty much equal responsibility in selling the emotional climax of the entire film, and the two of them pull off an outstanding finish.

I really anticipate that there are going to be cries of “lesbian erasure” in response to this movie, or claims that the movie turned a lesbian into a straight woman. But the movie makes it absolutely clear that it’s not about a lesbian discovering she’s straight; it’s about a lesbian discovering she’s either bi or pan. She makes that clear in dialogue where she says she doesn’t know which of the two labels fits her the best. Plus, even though this is a movie about Young Elliott falling in love with a boy for the first time, there’s a line of dialogue that indicates that Older Elliott still dates women, so there’s no doubt that she’s still queer after falling in love with a boy. And a movie about a queer person realizing they’re a different category of queer than they previously thought doesn’t change the fact that the character is still queer. So the only people I really anticipate having a problem with this movie are people who are only interested in protecting their own subcategory of the LGBTQ+ community without seeing themselves allied with the entire community as a whole.

The movie leaves you wondering what you would say to your younger self if you had the opportunity to give them advice. Me? Would I tell myself to come out earlier, back in the days before trans rights became a mainstream issue? I doubt I’d listen. Would I try to tell my younger self to get my mom to quit smoking? I doubt my mom would listen. Would I tell my younger self not to fall in love with my more abusive exes? Again, I doubt I’d listen. But I’d never tell my younger self not to fall in love with the one who broke my heart the most because I wouldn’t trade those happy times with that person for anything. And that’s part of the point of this movie that, even knowing the future, you’d probably make the same mistakes. But it also makes the point that those mistakes may be worthwhile, and that maybe you aren’t actually smarter than your younger self. Maybe you’re just more cautious because you’ve been hurt more. Maybe there are lessons you can learn from the person you used to be.

Rating: 93/100

My Old Ass opens in select theaters September 13 and everywhere on September 27

Stay tuned for more reviews from CinemaQ

Photo courtesy of MAarni Grossman © Amazon Ccontent Services LLC