Wit, wisdom and warm emotion: My Old Ass something special – if you can look past the name
Look past that ungainly name and see something special in the warm and witty feel-good My Old Ass, writes Leigh Paatsch.
Leigh Paatsch
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From a truly affecting coming-of-age comedy drama to an animated Transformers spinoff that’s better than it has any right to be, there’s some genuine quality on the big and small screen this week.
MY OLD ASS (M)
Director: Megan Park (The Fallout)
Starring: Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza, Percy Hynes White
Rating:★★★★½
Nothing fits right, but everything sits perfectly
Before this review proceeds any further, a truly conflicting paradox must be addressed.
For though this is undoubtedly one of the most beautifully realised feel-good movies of recent times, it comes with one of the most butt-ugly titles imaginable.
While My Old Ass is neither the story of an ageing donkey nor a wrinkled derriere, there could have been better labelling affixed to the delightful, moving and deceptively insightful package delivered here.
If you can look past that ungainly name, you will soon be seeing something special.
A clever, yet slender premise is instantly intriguing enough to have you leaning forward in your seat, if only to wonder how a complete movie will be generated from such a bitsy idea.
Elliott (Maisy Stella) is 18 years old and about to leave her family farm for a new life in the big smoke. She and her friends decamp to some nearby woods to celebrate and commiserate.
After some mushrooms of a rather magic origin are consumed, Elliott realises that an unknown passenger has hitched a ride on her hallucinogenic trip.
Words are exchanged and a colourful conversation ensues, after which Elliott is genuinely shocked by the true identity of her new companion: none other than her 39-year-old self.
For the sake of brevity, let’s call her Old Elliott (Aubrey Plaza). While not exactly as smart and all-knowing as visitors from the future often are, Old Elliott is sensitive enough to the dangers of travelling through time to not leave Young Elliott with too much advance information about what is on the way.
In fact, Old E has only two solid tips for Young E to live her best life: be nicer to her family, and if she happens to ever meet someone named Chad, get away from this dude at all costs.
At this point, with Old E and Young E going their separate ways, it seems as if the writers of My Old Ass have scripted themselves into a corner from which there is no real promising escape.
However, almost miraculously, the movie breaks free from its storytelling straitjacket with hefty helpings of wit, wisdom and warm emotion.
By the time a truly touching final act is underway, the whole experience has moved some distance away from where you thought it might be heading.
In the tradition of the best feel-good movies, My Old Ass picks you up and sets you down in a better place than where you started.
My Old Ass is in cinemas now
HIS THREE DAUGHTERS (M)
Rating:★★★★½
Now streaming on Netflix
The trio of daughters mentioned in the title are played by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne, and together they deliver a masterclass in powerfully precise performance. The proof is all there in the opening scene of this claustrophobic yet expansive comedy-drama, in which three sisters are gathered around the kitchen table of the apartment in which they were raised to discuss what is happening just down the hall. Their father is on the brink of passing away. It could be tonight that he goes. Or maybe tomorrow. He could even hang on until next week. In the space of one conversation, we receive small but telling hints that the controlling sibling of the group (Coon) is spiralling out of control, the meek-and-mild one (Olsen) may not be the pushover she seems, and the black sheep of the bunch (Lyonne) could be the only one able to cope with the crisis soon to come.
Though this dialogue-driven affair rarely leaves its cramped principal setting, the sheer quality of the acting continually widens the emotional impact of the movie. By the bittersweet end, we have arrived at a place that inevitably awaits most families: where everyone must get on with what needs to be done, even if they don’t get along.
TRANSFORMERS ONE (PG)
Rating:★★★½
General release
After all those underwhelming, overblown Transformers movies, you are quite within your rights to give Transformers One the must-miss treatment. However, there are a few key differences in play here deserving of consideration.
First of all, the filmmakers have ditched all live-action mechanised mayhem entirely. Instead, this Transformers is an artfully all-animated affair, and the switch to the illustrated realm is a winning one. Secondly, some major modifications to time and place have decluttered the often-jumbled Transformers mythology very pleasingly. So what you get here is an origin story for all the megamachines that matter, inside a surprisingly involving adventure that unfolds entirely on their home planet of Cybertron.
Better still, we finally come to understand how Optimus Prime and Megatron have been arch-enemies for so many millennia. To seal a solid deal, you also get a stellar voice cast led by Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry and Jon Hamm. Much, much better than any Transformers tragic might have hoped for.
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