Do you remember when you were just on the brink of adulthood, about to embark on your first attempt to live alone and find yourself amongst other people of an academic bent? Elliot (Maisy Stella) is a girl celebrating her 18th birthday, has just fallen into bed with someone she’s lusted after since 8th grade and is about to leave for college and she meets her older self.

“My Old Ass” is the name she gives to her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) who has, via a brew of psychedelic mushroom tea, tripped into 18-year-old Elliot’s consciousness to warn her. Of course, the 39-year-old Eliott knows there may be a problem with the space-time continuum and a danger of changing the future, so she cryptically warns her younger self to beware of Chad (Percy Hynes White).

You might be thinking of all possible horror films outcomes and writer/director Megan Park is counting on that. Yet what happens is the thing one hopes people feel after viewing a production of “Our Town.” Things are changing and will continue to change and the younger Elliott takes time to appreciate things and people. She’s not some spoiled teen lazying about as the summer passes. She works on her family’s cranberry bog, harvesting the cranberries.

Despite the name, this is a sensitive coming-of-age story that isn’t just about lust, but also about love and how to live life. Both Stella and Plaza give their versions of Elliott intersecting connections with a whisper of difference between them. White’s Chad is mysterious enough at first. Maria Dizzia and Al Goulem as Elliott’s parents and Seth Isaac Johnson as her brother Max and Carter Trozzolo as her brother Spencer all are nuanced enough to be believable as family. Maddie Ziegler as Ruth’s and Kerrie Brooks as Ro, Elliott’s besties, provide a comfortable safe harbor away from family. Alexandria Rivera as Chelsea, Eliott’s object of lust, is perhaps too good-natured about what becomes a summer fling, but this is science fiction with a slight romantic edge and a measure of comedy to blunt the sadness of leaving childhood and one’s home behind.

“My Old Ass” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It was released by Amazon MGM Studios on 13 September 2024 and released internationally by Warner Bros. Pictures.