Review: Stay Away from Chads
Get your ass to the theaters to see Megan Park’s 'My Old Ass'
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰✰
Romance: ✰✰✰✰½
Sex: ✰✰✰✰
Storytelling: ✰✰✰✰
Performance: ✰✰✰ ½
Yearning: ✰✰✰✰✰
Don’t be an ass—like this post?
Very few spoilers!!
Written by Meg Steinfeld-Heim
Yesterday, I was lucky. I was lucky that we wrapped a few hours early on set. I was lucky and got back to Brooklyn early enough to catch a movie without it being too too late. And I was lucky enough to see Megan Park’s sophomore feature, My Old Ass, in theaters.
I’m grateful I made the time for it—I see so many trailers and read so many write-ups and think, ooh I’d love to see that. But then life and work happen and the average price of a movie ticket in New York City climbs steadily and then I think, okay well, I’ll catch it when it’s on streaming. And then I have to contend with the failed promise of streaming and so most movies live in the purgatory of my Letterboxd watchlist. But not My Old Ass.
My Old Ass features Elliott (Maisy Stella), a massively gay 18-year-old right on the cusp of moving away from her rural Canadian home and starting college at the University of Toronto. She starts off as sort of the classic portrait of girl-ready-to-get-the-hell-out-of-her-hometown: there’s a moving countdown in her head as she hooks up with the cute barista in town and tears across the picturesque lake in a little motorboat with her besties. The stuff of so many songs and movies and stories. You only come of age once…or do you?
One night, Elliott camps out in the Canadian woods with her two best friends, Ruthie (Maddie Ziegler) and Ro (Kerrice Brooks) to do mushrooms together. Annoyed, she watches Ro and Ruthie descend into silly, innocent trips while she feels nothing. Then, as Elliott pouts on a log in front of a crackling fire, she appears. “She” being…Elliott. 39-year-old Elliot (Aubrey Plaza). Through the power of getting supremely high, young Elliott has summoned an older version of herself. Older Elliott runs through a series of intimate facts (my favorite is: “Left boob is a cup size smaller than the right, no it never evens out but it’s okay, boys can’t really tell…Girls can”) to prove without a doubt that she is the older version of Elliott.
I love that this movie wastes no time with the “business” of laying out this mythology. It just is: this is the older version of Elliott, and she was conjured by mushrooms. Older Elliott puts her number in Elliott’s phone and then they can text and call. Badda boom. The two spend hours texting and talking, with older Elliott giving simple life advice like, “Hang out with your brothers” and “Please moisturize” and sharing openly about certain things in their future, but refusing to reveal other truths. One thing she remains adamant about: “Stay away from anyone named Chad”. Naturally, Elliott soon meets Chad, a disarming, gawky, and sweet summer hire on her family’s farm.
This movie is like those reflections that we all have as we get older; when we look back at ourselves and our lives and think about the knowledge and experiences we have now that we wish we could bring back in time. As much as Ali bullies me about being 30, getting older is truly such a gift. And My Old Ass has found such a perfect way to demonstrate what we come to understand about our younger selves as we get older. Aubrey Plaza is surprisingly vulnerable and raw in this older role. Sometimes life kicks your ass and hurts your heart and you recover, as we often do, but there’s still a little piece of you that always remembers that pain. From the moment we see her onscreen, Aubrey’s eyes hold all of that. She really brings to life that bittersweet feeling of looking back at your younger, dumber self with grace; that is to say, not unkindly.
Naturally, even though her older self repeatedly tells her not to, Elliott starts falling for Chad. Her older self won't tell her why she has to stay away. Just that she needs to. And so the emotional tension that My Old Ass creates around Chad just builds and builds, because you feel warned by Plaza’s character, whom you grow to trust so much. But you also feel completely charmed by Chad. Percy Hynes White plays Chad beautifully; he’s open and kind and loveable from the jump. Every scene with him feels safe. I found myself worrying the entire time about what we didn’t know. I also loved the subversion of their romance in this story. Elliott isn’t a young woman shocked to discover her first time feelings for a woman. Instead, it's a profoundly queer story where her new feelings teach her how expansive love can be. Plus, bisexuality!
Stella’s performance as young Elliott wavered a bit for me. There were many moments where it felt informed by the memorable public personas of JoJo Siwa or Renee Rapp. I’m not necessarily saying that in a derogatory way…but it felt overall like she was finding her footing by pulling from a few different wells of inspiration. This is Stella’s first feature and first leading role, and I think she has such a presence on screen even while still growing into her craft. My favorites were her big goofy moments (cc: the Justin Bieber mushroom trip).
This movie excels in beautiful mundanity; like your mom popping her head into your bedroom while you untangle jewelry, or getting brunch with your friends on a summer day. A casual conversation between Elliott and her mom in Adirondack chairs totally broke me; there is nothing like when your mom tells a story about when you were a baby and you can feel precisely how much she loves you. The little Canadian lake town and Elliott’s family cranberry farm are also idyllic backdrops for this story. I was moved by so many little moments in this script. Chad asks Elliott if she remembers the very last time she played pretend with friends as a kid, and did she know at the time that it would be the very last time? Of course, it is a devastating fact of life that we almost never know these things in the moment. Park really has a gift for peppering in these gut-punch moments of reflection and nostalgia.
This movie is not a tearjerker. Instead, it's a prescription for an ugly cry that you didn’t see coming but needed anyway. It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and thoughtful. You can feel so much love in this movie, and like a good mom or sibling or visit from your future self—it will take care of you.
My Old Ass is in select theaters now and will be in theaters everywhere September 27th.
Once again, TY review got my old ass in theaters, and it was worth it! Thank you for your continued brilliance, and happy second bday!
This makes me so excited to watch