In My old ass, a teenage girl named Elliott (Maisy Stella) takes a bunch of magic mushrooms and meets her older self (Aubrey Plaza), who then offers advice over long phone calls during a critical summer. Throughout the film, it is unclear whether the time travel is actually happening – and director Megan Park says this was intentional.
“You don’t get stuck in the logistics of time travel and things like that,” she tells Polygon. “That’s not the film I wanted to make. And at the end of the day, it’s really just a human story.”
That particular setup seems so specific to this film, but Park says she and her team were really looking at romantic comedy 13 Goes through 30 as a film that did what they were trying to achieve. It has a similar topical concept, where a teenage girl makes a wish and wakes up as her adult self.
“We’ve referred to it many times,” Park says. “It’s buy-in that works.”
Park explains that the team looked at films that were slightly exaggerated, but ultimately worked because the characters and stories were so strong – and at timeless films that really capture the essence of a specific summer.
Here are seven films that Park says he directly influenced My old ass.
Where to watch: Available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV
As Park puts it: 13 Goes through 30 is a movie with huge buy-in: Jenna (Jennifer Garner), a young teenager desperate to be cool, makes a wish to skip the humiliating teenage years and become a successful 30-year-old. When she opens her eyes, she’s grown up and must grapple with all the decisions she’s made over the past seventeen years and figure out if the person she always wanted to be is the person she really likes. Oh, and she also reconnects with her childhood best friend (played in adulthood by Mark Ruffalo, who is absolutely swoon-worthy) and sparks fly between them.
It’s not just a question of ‘magic or not’: the idea of a teenager confronting her older self certainly raises My old ass.
Another film with an over-the-top premise that makes the audience suspend their disbelief, but in a way that works. The 1993 comedy stars Robin Williams as a divorced father with little access to his children who devises a plan to see them more often: he disguises himself as an older British nanny and convinces his ex-wife to hire him. to take. It’s not quite the same as a teenage girl interacting with her older self in some way, but Park has reason to reference it.
“Obviously this doesn’t happen (in real life), but you don’t care because you love the characters and you’re so invested in the story that you find yourself crying,” Park says.
Where to watch: Available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV
To nail My old ass‘s specific summer nostalgia, Park says the filmmakers watched a lot of timeless summer movies. My girl is a typical coming-of-age summer movie, about a quirky little girl named Vada (Anna Chlumsky), a hypochondriac who has an obsession with death due to the fact that her mother died after giving birth and her father (Dan Aykroyd) owns it of the city funeral home. She has one friend in the entire world: Thomas J. (Macaulay Culkin), who is allergic to almost everything.
Like My old ass The film takes place during a very crucial summer. Vada takes a summer writing class, hooks up with her father’s new girlfriend, and ultimately has to face her feelings about death head-on.
Where to watch: Available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV
I like to mention this one Stay with me but for girls. It follows four best friends at two different points in their lives: a memorable summer in 1970 when they were 12 years old, and then a reunion in 1995 when they are all adults. In the flashback, the four of them are dealing with separate family issues, but they come together because the narrator Samantha (Gaby Hoffmann in childhood, Demi Moore in adulthood) plans to hold séances at the local cemetery (to avoid the fighting of to escape her parents). Ultimately, they try to investigate the death of a boy from 1945, while dealing with several other preteen struggles, such as first kisses, family secrets, and adolescent dreams. Once again, the Big Memorable Summer thread My old ass is clear, but there is also the idea of an adult reflecting on her childhood and learning a valuable lesson from it.
Where to watch: Disney Plus
As a kid, was there anything more exciting than seeing the amazing summer camp? The Parent trap? Twins Hallie and Annie (both played by Lindsay Lohan) were separated at birth by their divorced parents and meet by chance at a summer camp. They decided to switch places, both of them getting to know their respective absent parents and possibly allowing them to reconnect. It’s a movie that just screams summer. And the summer camp the twins attend, with its tall pine trees and large lake, certainly feels like it was on the mood board for the picturesque lakeside farm in My old ass.
Where to watch: Disney Plus
In this summer comedy, a preteen devises a plan with his friends to host a fake summer camp. Instead of being forced to go to camps they don’t want to go to, they join forces to rent out an old campsite and trick their parents into sending them to this epic summer camp with no counselors or rules. Well, they do have one fake advisor: an old drama teacher, played by Christopher Lloyd, who they’ve blackmailed into helping. They’re exactly the kind of over-the-top summer scandals that could inspire a movie about a teenager tripping so hard on magic mushrooms that she sees her older self.
Where to watch: Available for digital rental or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV
Perhaps the most obvious romantic film on this list, Dirty dancing is about an unexpected summer romance between a wealthy young woman (Jennifer Gray) and her dance instructor (Patrick Swayze). But it also tackles some larger themes about class differences and reproductive rights. Yet the summer romance is the backdrop that fuels the story – and moments at the lake play a big role in that too My old ass‘s romantic subplot between Elliott and Chad, the boy who works on her family’s farm this summer.