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 function movie newcomer Maisy Stella as Elliott and Aubrey Plaza (Emily the Prison, 2022) as Elliott’s 39-year-old self. Elliott lives on a small Canadian island identified for its cranberry farms. She is a typical too-busy-for-family 18-year-old, making ready for her coming life in Toronto and hooking up with sizzling ladies earlier than she heads out.
As a birthday present, finest good friend Ro (Kerrice Brooks) arranges a good friend’s campout whereby all of them drink shroom tea and go on hallucinogenic journeys collectively. Whereas her two friends comically journey out by the forest, Elliott sits on a log and is visited by her older self. At first, Plaza is actually a ghost of Christmas Future making an attempt 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 vitality in Stella’s Elliott pairs so nicely with Plaza’s wry appeal. Park fashions full characterizations from the comparatively temporary interactions our two cornerstones spend with one another.
The center piece of the movie too usually falls into montage household comedy-drama territory that lacks any identification aside 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 think about the worth in our errors, confusions, loves, and losses. A witty, charming, candy coming-of-middle-age movie, it should go away Flickchart groupies asking, “Does this belong within the time journey filter?”
