Sundance YA romance needs a better ending

By no means earlier than in my life have I left a film considering, “All that wanted was 20 extra minutes.” 

Not as soon as, till I noticed “My Previous Ass,” which premiered Saturday night time on the Sundance Movie Pageant.

Director Megan Park’s in any other case dreamy teen romance flick with a time-travel twist was chugging alongside fairly sublimely, after which it abruptly stopped like somebody reduce energy to the constructing.

With out giving an excessive amount of away, my hunch is that writer-director Park ended her movie, which is produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap, the way in which she did with a purpose to keep away from being lumped in with a very drained young-adult sub-genre. 

That’s the suitable concept. Even so, the ultimate 10 minutes are late-for-my-flight rushed, particularly for a movie a couple of life-changing summer time spent on a picturesque lake. 

Eighteen-year-old Elliott (Maisy Stella) is lower than a month away from lastly leaving her sleepy Canadian city, the place her household has tended crops for many years, for a a lot bigger and colder lake in Toronto.

She’s itching to get out — “I can’t be a 3rd technology cranberry farmer!,” she says — although she’ll be abandoning her two greatest buddies and a summer time fling. That perspective will get shaken up when, throughout a hallucinogenic mushroom journey within the woods, her future self (Aubrey Plaza) seems to her. 

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

That is the place the viewer should droop their disbelief on two fronts.

First, Plaza seems nothing like Stella. Zero. However Park addresses this discrepancy in humorous methods.

“I don’t have a spot in my tooth!,” younger Elliott observes.

“Put on your retainer!,” Plaza replies.

The opposite leap we should make is accepting the science fiction. Time-traveling Elliott places her quantity into teen Elliott’s telephone as “My Previous Ass” they usually start calling and texting one another from totally different years. It’s sci-fi with none guidelines or explanations, however you recover from that shortly.

A part of what makes the kookiness simpler to swallow than it would in any other case be is Plaza’s beloved deadpan. Whereas guffawing away, we mechanically consider and belief in every little thing she says.

Elliott, nonetheless, doesn’t. Her 39-year-old double offers her two sage items of recommendation: Be nicer to her household that she often ignores, and don’t become involved with anyone named Chad.

Minutes later, throughout a unadorned swim, she meets tall and good-looking Chad (Percy Hynes White), a seasonal farmhand who’s additionally a college biology main. 

Elliott begins to understand her mother and youthful brothers extra. Her dad is an oddly tiny character, though he does utter the primary Canadian “soarry!” we’ve been ready for all night time. She additionally makes an attempt to not flirt with Chad, and fails as most 18-year-olds caught in a city of 300 individuals would.

Stella and White not solely appears like a retailer I’d purchase an overpriced wicker chair from. The pair additionally has a candy, uniquely Gen Z love connection that Park by no means hammers house too onerous. Should you’ve ever been boating on a lake, their first kiss received’t really feel cliche in any respect.

Park’s message is identical timeless one in all “Our City” or “A Christmas Carol”: Study to understand what’s proper in entrance of you… with the assistance of some otherworldly intervention. 

She sells it with a light-weight contact, and moments like Elliott’s sport of golf together with her brother sneak up on us emotionally. Her littlest bro has an obsessive crush on Saoirse Ronan, which is a wacky element.

Ninety % of the film is a really nice watch. All “My Previous Ass” wanted was just a few extra conversations with Elliott’s household and buddies to offer extra closure for her and the movie. But it surely’s too late now.

What a disgrace that we will’t actually make telephone calls to the previous.