A Comedic Drama Exploring Identity and Time
;Elliott explores her past through a trip on mushrooms in the song ‘My Old Ass,’ which not only made her rethink family and love before she left for college at age 18. But with regards to the future experiences, it offers a humorous but still heartfelt depiction of her life.
While allowing elements of comic relief, the work exposes deep philosophical aspects of life for the audience such as, relationships within a family and the search for identity. It deals with LGBTQ+ issues and emotions of being queer while describing identity, love, interspersed with magical realism, which adds to the concept.
Maisy Stella excel in young Elliott where she demonstrates young confused, bewildered but exciting disposition. Aubrey Plaza did a great job portraying her mature version; she looks wise and still jokes around. As for the supporting characters: the young man played by Percy Hynes White is charismatic and brings some good energy into the film.
Directed by Megan Park, it is filled with emotions and comedy with no plot hole which makes the story familiar, but at the same time very personal. Honestly, her vision that allows for visually telling a compelling story cements her as another director to look out for.
‘The songs like hallucinated Justin Bieber fit the theme while adding a whimsical and effective message on the musical level while enriching the musical illustrations at the periods of the film enhancing the hallucination story.
The technical features and mise-en-scène revolve around the picturesque setting of the lake and woods, which apart from creating a meditative tone reflect on Elliott’s transformation. It is beautiful and natural and gives the magcal realism that forms the basis of the film a solid ground.
The design also successfully pits cranberry farm’s provinciality against the metropolitan environment, which mirrors the journey from change and back to the familiar – Elliott’s. Realistic settings are well-described and contribute to the story’s build up of intensity.
Over the entire movie, special effects do not overpower the time travel matter and keep the audience as its subject. These are done in a tastefully beautiful way which has added extra feel to the magical part of the whole experience.
The editing is smooth and it also manages to keep up with the transition between comedy and drama at nearly every part of the film. It benefits the story by not switching from one voice to another suddenly and by helping maintain the audience’s interest.
The pacing of the movie is steady, it does not get ahead of itself while at the same time it does not lag behind. A major strength of this show is that revelations are timed as well as comedic moments so that the viewers have time to think about the themes before getting distracted.
Claus Frederiksen emphasized that the dialog of the play is divided into funny and deep, which is the main principle of communicative actions for each time. It really seems like real life — or, at the very least, like real-life people — particularly at key points when the focus is on the individual characters’ Inner Monologues.
‘My Old Ass’ thus revolves around brilliant storytelling though this is somewhat overshadowed by predictable coming-of-age scenes. But this is balanced by a more unique element of the series – time-travel, which gives a degree of novelty to the overall plot.
It is a difficult name to forget mainly because of its unique setting mixed with elements of magical realism and drama that strike the right chord of laughter and emotion . It made me think whether time and identity are real or not which of course gave me deep thoughts while watching the movie.
