MY OLD ASS
**½/****
starring Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler
written and directed by Megan Park
OMNI LOOP
**½/****
starring Mary-Louise Parker, Ayo Edibiri, Carlos Jacott, Harris Yulin
screenplay by Bernardo Britto
directed by Bernardo Britto
by Walter Chaw Writing in the time of John Donne and Andrew Marvell, who both had takes on his “once was horny, now reformed” shtick, Robert Herrick was an Anglican cleric who came upon his piety late in life, as many of us do. Herrick’s most famous work is a “to his coy mistress” bit about “gather[ing] ye rosebuds while ya may,” which, while not as vivid as Marvell’s version threatening a woman that worms will take the frigid object of his pursuit’s virginity if she doesn’t lose it before she dies, is nevertheless a come-on passing as wisdom. As advice to a younger self goes, though, getting laid as much as possible seems the standard, along with more flossing. (It says something that Billy Joel offers the same carrot to his Catholic inamorata in “Only the Good Die Young.”) As we collectively advance into the winter of our sour regret over the calamities we didn’t avoid that have led us to a dark and dimming future, find two films about going back in time to warn, provide guidance for, and essentially function as a mentor to our younger selves before it’s too late. I think it’s touching that we’re having this idea at the same time–strangers, I mean, scenting great change carried on the same foul wind and offering up signal fires from their respective, isolated bunkers. It’s like the last exhalation of a drowning man: it won’t make a shred of difference, but it does trouble the water for a second. Besides, at this point, “touching” is all we got left.
Megan Park’s sophomore feature My Old Ass casts the terminally overexposed Aubrey Plaza as Elliott, a stoner new-age acolyte who manages somehow to send herself back 20 years to visit her teenage self (Maisy Stella) one fateful summer. Seems Elliott will meet dreamy Chad (Percy Hynes White) at the lake on the farm her family used to own–and if old Elliott is to be trusted (it is, after all, the purpose of her trip), this Chad should be avoided at all costs. Naturally, Chad proves irresistible despite young Elliott’s best attempts at spurning him, and then more drama ensues when young Elliott discovers her life is about to change in more ways than just a seasonal fling. What’s exceedingly smart about My Old Ass is how it centers Stella at the expense of Plaza–Stella, whose churlishness and prickly, slack-jawed pothead business wears a helluva lot better on a twenty-year-old than on a forty-year-old. Still, Plaza’s worst tendencies are so well-masqued that she even owns an effective emotional payoff towards the end of the film, where Old Elliott is reunited with Chad in a sad embrace. Here, Plaza expresses a panoply of complex and conflicting emotions that land somewhere between regret and love. It’s a potent reminder that she can be good when she’s not doing the bit that made her famous–when her eyes are used for their intelligence and expressiveness and not for exasperated rolling. For the rest of it, My Old Ass is a rote but serviceable coming-of-age tearjerker. At under 90 minutes, it doesn’t wear out its welcome. It’s mediocre in a way I didn’t mind, and it made a big splash at Sundance. I should have just said that instead.
Bernardo Britto’s sophomore feature Omni Loop casts the terminally overexposed Ayo Edebiri as Paula, a brilliant grad student studying physics recruited by the melancholy Zoya (Mary-Louise Parker), who’s come into possession of some magical time-travel pills. It’s unclear if the pills work on everyone, but the implication is they might. Zoya’s been diagnosed with a “black hole in her chest,” which is the sort of thing John Patrick Shanley might write into a movie and that only John Patrick Shanley could carry off with the proper level of whimsy and self-effacing humour. Zoya’s pills send her back in time five days each time she takes one–but she can only take one at a time. She would like to take more to extend her reach into the past, and she believes Paula is the genius who can help her with that.
This means a lot of sequences that end in frustration because the science isn’t working, plus a lot of Edebiri’s Bob Newhart shtick where she stammers and reacts in a comically perplexed way. It’s a minor miracle no one’s worked out a buddy comedy pairing Plaza and Edebiri yet, since we clearly haven’t suffered enough. I will say I’ve loved Parker in everything she’s ever appeared in, and though she plays this one wan and pinched, she does it well. There’s a scene where Harris Yulin, as one of Zoya’s old professors, tears her down for being a smart student who never seemed to have much of a purpose that works because it cut me pretty close to the bone. My greatest regrets in life have to do with squandering opportunities as a youth out of ignorance or pride. Or both. For the rest of it, Omni Loop is a rote but serviceable tearjerker about accepting mortality and the importance of living life “while ya may.” At 107 minutes, it wears out its welcome a bit, but it’s mediocre in a way I didn’t mind and it made a big splash at SXSW. I should have just said that instead.
