My Previous Ass (2024)
1,398 / 5,584 (75%)
Straight out of Sundance into our native theaters is Megan Park’s sophomore directorial effort (she beforehand did 2021’s The Fallout starring Jenna Ortega), the coming-of-age story My Previous Ass that speaks to our younger maturity and middle-aged selves. It stars characteristic movie newcomer Maisy Stella as Elliott and Aubrey Plaza (Emily the Felony, 2022) as Elliott’s 39-year-old self. Elliott lives on a small Canadian island recognized for its cranberry farms. She is a typical too-busy-for-family 18-year-old, getting ready for her coming life in Toronto and hooking up with sizzling ladies earlier than she heads out.
As a birthday reward, greatest buddy Ro (Kerrice Brooks) arranges a buddy’s campout whereby all of them drink shroom tea and go on hallucinogenic journeys collectively. Whereas her two buddies comically journey out by means of the forest, Elliott sits on a log and is visited by her older self. At first, Plaza is actually a ghost of Christmas Future attempting to show our Ebenezer to not be such a teenage asshole to her household. Stella and Plaza have a superb chemistry, as the intense youthful and clever power in Stella’s Elliott pairs so properly with Plaza’s wry allure. Park fashions full characterizations from the comparatively transient interactions our two cornerstones spend with one another.
The center piece of the movie too typically falls into montage household comedy-drama territory that lacks any identification apart from being essential fodder for private revelations. Stella’s charisma and Park’s witty dialogue drive this portion of My Previous Ass, preserving it above the fray, whereas not breaking any new floor. The third act’s revelations, and the way Park deftly handles them, are what separates Park’s second movie from the coming-of-age morass. She pivots to a direct dialog about what all such movies are: older age ruminations and dialogues with our youthful celebrations, failures, and ache.
My Previous Ass engages in the usual cool indie child humor, pictures, and protagonists, however pushes us to contemplate the worth in our errors, confusions, loves, and losses. A witty, charming, candy coming-of-middle-age movie, it is going to go away Flickchart groupies asking, “Does this belong within the time journey filter?”
