My Old Ass, Short Takes on some other cinematic topics

“This is the long-distance call”

(taken from the lyrics of Paul Simon’s "The Boy in the Bubble" [1986 Graceland album],

which otherwise has no connection with this movie except for the similar oddities)

Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke

I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.  However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, though better options may be on the horizon.  (Note: Anything in bold blue [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)

My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”

(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)

              My Old Ass (Megan Park)   rated R   89 min.

Here’s the trailer:

       (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size; 

       activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy).  To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows: 

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

 While there were some interesting other choices for something to see/review this week, I took My Old Ass mostly because of its connections to what I explored last week, The Substance,* although while the similarities concern the meeting of a younger and older version of the same person the plot differences are drastic as the former’s about an aging (just 50, but you know how youth-obsessed our culture can be [apparently except for certain politicians who keep getting re-elected over the decades]) media celebrity who, through mysterious circumstances, creates a younger version of herself with calamity following whereas in My Old Ass the younger (18) version of Elliot (Maisy Stella)—finishing her summer after high school in Canadian cranberry farm country (her family’s been doing this for generations) before soon heading off to college in Toronto—suddenly meets the 39-year-old-version of herself (Aubrey Plaza) who’s somehow (never explained) come to offer some crucial advice to younger Elliot.  The Substance is ultimately a grotesque, mad-science horror film where the new woman (calls herself Sue, played by Margaret Qualley) never makes clear what she knows of the life and experiences of her older self (Elisabeth, played by Demi Moore) while in My Old Ass young Elliot knows nothing of her future beyond the present minute while older Elliot is clearly aware of everything that’s happened during the ensuing 21 years, although the primary change she asks of the younger one would presumably upset her current timeline (as with Marty McFly’s parents in Back to the Future [Robert Zemeckis, 1985]), so she may actually be asking for more than she can handle.  To better understand all of this, how about a quick summary of the plot?

*In that review I linked to a video about the film (14:50) which led to a comment by my wife, Nina, when she read my posting.  She wonders why it included graphics of quotes by director Coralie Fargeat rather than footage of the filmmaker saying what she does about her intentionally-disturbing work; I can’t speak to this, but I will let Fargeat speak for herself (along with her primary actors) in a 16:16 clip after the film’s screening at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.  Then, for balance, here’s director Park, (23:01) along with her main actors as they discuss their related-yet-quite-different-movie.  Thanks to Nina for steering me toward these explorations of the 2 narratives.

 Young Elliot is having a peaceful time, much of it spent in a rowboat around a lake near the family farm when she’s not in town kissing her girlfriend, Chelsea (Alexandria Rivera), as Elliot sees herself as a proudly-out lesbian.  Then, ruining a family (Mom Kathy [Maria Dizzia], Dad Tom [Al Goulem], brothers older Max [Seth Isaac Johnson] and younger Spenser [Carter Trozzolo]) surprise of a dinner cake for her 18^th birthday, Elliot goes on an overnight camping trip with her friends Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks), their true purpose being to get high from some mushroom tea.  Off by herself after indulging, Elliot’s shocked to suddenly be next to the older version of herself who tells her to get closer with her family and avoid a boy named Chad.  Next morning, Elliot assumes this was all simple hallucination but finds older Elliot (now a Ph.D. student) has left her phone number, under the name My Old Ass (as a response to her younger self wanting to kiss the older one or at least touch her butt) which works fine when younger Elliot makes a call (with the implication older Elliot’s receiving the connection in her own time frame of the future) so she’s mysteriously, jarringly real.  Soon enough, though, young Elliot meets Chad while swimming in the lake, then finds him invited to join a family breakfast as he’ll be doing some type of work at the farm.

 Elliot keeps trying to avoid him even as she realizes she’s attracted, decides maybe she’s bisexual after all, but can’t get a response from her older self as to what’s the problem with Chad.  ⇒ Over the course of the next few scenes Elliot finds out from Max that Dad’s about to sell the farm (this upsets her, even though she has no interest in inheriting it); she gets the last of the mushroom tea from Ro in an attempt to conjure up older Elliot but just hallucinates she’s Justin Bieber, sings his “One Less Lonely Girl” song; finds out Chad already attends her Toronto college and has sex with him.  Then, older Elliot comes back, finally admits Chad will die of cancer so she’s been trying to protect her younger self from the heartbreak that will cause but decides to simply go away and let teenage Elliot live her own life (although—unnoted in the script—she now knows her new lover will die, so she’ll have to start living with that sadness earlier in her life).⇐  My Old Ass is a pleasure to watch, although I’d have preferred to see more of older Elliot, but I have to understand the focus here is on the younger woman and the mixed feelings she has for Chad, knowing she’s seriously attracted to him enough to challenge her own identity-assumptions while knowing that something’s not right for her about him, as warned from her that’s-all-I’m-gonna-say older self.  (Very frustrating!)

 Stella does a solid job of holding the primary focus of this story, but as an older person myself (admittedly, decades beyond 39) I’d have been interested in getting a fuller sense of older Elliot, given we end up knowing so little about her (via one of those phone calls we sense she has at least one child; if there’s a mate of some sort as well in her life [or not] we’ll just have to imagine the details of that on our own).  Compared to the horrible events in The Substance, this movie’s pairing of different-aged-versions of the same person is quiet, generally comforting, encouraging for the teenage protagonist that her life will go on—despite whatever challenges she has to face—even take her far beyond her current foggy sense of a future into the higher realms of academia (although being a grad student at 39 implies she’s encountered quite a few sidetrips along the way of ongoing adulthood).  I can easily highly recommend a viewing of My Old Ass (even though we never get any clarity on how/why older Elliot’s time travel occurs), as does the CCAC with the Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews at a strong 90%, the Metacritic average score at 74% (encouraging for these misers; actually, these numbers are about what they gave to The Substance except MC was a bit higher for that one).  It was released in domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters on September 13, 2024 but seems to have disappeared from such venues (made $5.4 million gross, a bit more internationally for $5.7 million worldwide), so if you want to see it you’ll need to turn to Amazon Prime Video where it’s free to subscribers (or you can get a 30-day free trial, $8,99 a month if you choose to stay longer), so I think you’d find it to be a delightful (if a little thin once you’re settled with the foundational premise), easily-consumed investment of your entertainment options (not overdone there either with such a useful, compact running time) that won’t run your emotions into the ground as with the disturbing, much-longer The Substance (although I do consider that one to be a more profound cinematic experience as long as you can tolerate the increasingly-ugly images along with the misogynistic content intended for a critique yet still a shameful reality in our world, as grotesque as those visuals).

 I’ll wrap this up as usual with a Musical Metaphor, which may seem off-base this time because it’s the Beach Boys’ “When I Grow Up (to be a Man)” (on their 1965 The Beach Boys Today! album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EzEhW1VO9M (from 1964; a poor video but it does show the original 5 members of the band; a somewhat better version is here [for the visuals, but audio's not so great in this one], from their 2012 50^th anniversary tour [which I saw in Berkeley, CA], with short-termer [filled in for Al Jardine for awhile] David Marks up front [on screen left; I don't know who the guy is on your farthest left, out of the spotlight]] to join Mike Love and Jardine, then the camera pans right some to show Bruce Johnson [replaced Brian Wilson for live shows from the mid-1960s, also joined in on recordings] on the far right, then Brian on the far left; sadly, Carl and Dennis Wilson, both dead, could only appear via video clips).  Now, I’m not implying with this song that Elliot will go transgender (not that there's anything wrong with that; although if she did, she’d already have a gender-neutral name), it’s just that these lyrics, with slight modification, do speak to teenage Elliot’s quandaries about her future, so it you just imagine changing “man” to “woman” (with a little tweak in intonation when singing) and “their old man’s” to “their old Mom’s” it would all work just fine (at least to my silly assumptions).  In fact, if Elliot is bisexual then the line “Will I look for the same things in a woman that I dig in a girl?” fits as written (how convenient for my premise!).  Well, I’ll leave you to contemplate whatever you like about Elliot’s present/future situation (damn, I wish I knew what she does about what happens with the 2028 election and beyond, but at least the world doesn’t seem to have died from climate change or warfare yet) with encouragement to see it, evaluate it for yourself.

 One final bit of age-related-commentary comes to mind when I see this movie as an MGM release—celebrating that studio’s 100 years of Hollywood existence with its logo of Leo the lion and the Latin declaration Ars Gratia Artis, “Arts for Arts Sake”—yet it’s actually an Amazon MGM Studios product as a tentpole of America’s cinematic past is now joined with a current blockbuster corporation, so for me it’s not only a likely progression of how such big-budget enterprises navigate the commercial landscape but also a bit sad how this entertainment giant's now just a unit of a marketing juggernaut.

              

SHORT TAKES

          

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:   

(1) How Conclave became a box-office hit (I’m anxious for it to come to steaming); 

and (2) Conan O'Brien to host the 2025 Oscars show (I also look forward to that).

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