Sundance YA romance needs a better ending

Never before in my life have I left a movie thinking, “All that needed was 20 more minutes.” 

Not once, until I saw “My Old Ass,” which premiered Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival.

Director Megan Park’s otherwise dreamy teen romance flick with a time-travel twist was chugging along quite sublimely, and then it abruptly stopped like someone cut power to the building.

Without giving too much away, my hunch is that writer-director Park ended her film, which is produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, the way she did in order to avoid being lumped in with a particularly tired young-adult sub-genre. 

That’s the right idea. Even so, the final 10 minutes are late-for-my-flight rushed, especially for a film about a life-changing summer spent on a picturesque lake. 

Eighteen-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) is less than a month away from finally leaving her sleepy Canadian town, where her family has tended crops for decades, for a much larger and colder lake in Toronto.

She’s itching to get out — “I can’t be a third generation cranberry farmer!,” she says — even though she’ll be leaving behind her two best friends and a summer fling. That attitude gets shaken up when, during a hallucinogenic mushroom trip in the woods, her future self (Aubrey Plaza) appears to her. 

“I am you,” Elliott’s counterpart says. “Well, I’m 39-year-old you.”

This is where the viewer must suspend their disbelief on two fronts.

First, Plaza looks nothing like Stella. Zero. But Park addresses this discrepancy in funny ways.

“I don’t have a gap in my teeth!,” young Elliott observes.

“Wear your retainer!,” Plaza replies.

The other leap we must make is accepting the science fiction. Time-traveling Elliott puts her number into teen Elliott’s phone as “My Old Ass” and they begin calling and texting each other from different years. It’s sci-fi without any rules or explanations, but you get over that quickly.

Part of what makes the kookiness easier to swallow than it might otherwise be is Plaza’s beloved deadpan. While giggling away, we automatically believe and trust in everything she says.

Elliott, however, does not. Her 39-year-old double gives her two sage pieces of advice: Be nicer to her family that she usually ignores, and don’t get involved with anybody named Chad.

Minutes later, during a naked swim, she meets tall and handsome Chad (Percy Hynes White), a seasonal farmhand who’s also a university biology major. 

Elliott begins to appreciate her mom and younger brothers more. Her dad is an oddly tiny character, although he does utter the first Canadian “soarry!” we’ve been waiting for all night. She also attempts to not flirt with Chad, and fails as most 18-year-olds stuck in a town of 300 people would.

Stella and White not only sounds like a store I might buy an overpriced wicker chair from. The pair also has a sweet, uniquely Gen Z love connection that Park never hammers home too hard. If you’ve ever been boating on a lake, their first kiss won’t feel cliche at all.

Park’s message is the same timeless one of “Our Town” or “A Christmas Carol”: Learn to appreciate what’s right in front of you… with the help of some otherworldly intervention. 

She sells it with a light touch, and moments like Elliott’s game of golf with her brother sneak up on us emotionally. Her littlest bro has an obsessive crush on Saoirse Ronan, which is a wacky detail.

Ninety percent of the movie is a very pleasant watch. All “My Old Ass” needed was a few more conversations with Elliott’s family and friends to provide more closure for her and the film. But it’s too late now.

What a shame that we can’t really make phone calls to the past.