I recently got to watch ‘My Old Ass’, a 2024 movie starring Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza and Percy Hynes White, and directed and written by Megan Park. Stella previously starred in ‘Nashville’ alongside Connie Britton, Hayden Panettiere, Charles Esten, and her sister, Lennon Stella. Aubrey Plaza starred in ‘Parks and Recreation’ alongside Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott and Chris Pratt. White starred in the Netflix hit, ‘Wednesday’, alongside Jenna Ortega, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Christina Ricci, Luis Guzman, and Hunter Doohan. Also this year, Hynes White co-starred with Ortega in the film, ‘Winter Summer Or Fall’, also available to watch on Amazon Prime, just like ‘My Old Ass’. He has since been fired from ‘Wednesday’ due to allegations of sexual assault, which were proven to be false. It’s so pathetic that someone would deliberately make up such stories and destroy someone’s career. It’s an embarrassment to people who actually survived sexual assault trauma.
Megan Park is a Canadian actress who’s career span over 20 years, with acting credits including ‘The Secret Life Of The American Teenager’, ‘A Cinderella Story: Once Upon A Song’, ‘So Undercover’, and ‘A Wish Come True’. ‘My Old Ass’ is a movie that she wrote and directed, marking her directorial debut. We’ve been talking a heck of a lot about trauma on this blog, particularly in my previous blog post, where we discussed YouTuber Shallon Lester as the main subject matter. To be exact, we spoke of mental health. That’s why I wanted to write about this movie so badly. At first glance, you think it’s your typical Gen-Z teen comedy. But then, at the very end of the movie, you realize that it’s so much more than that. It’s a coming-of-age story that leads you to ask many questions about life and the what-ifs of the great unknown; well as the known…
Let me explain…
‘My Old Ass’ follows 18 year old Elliot LaBrant as she prepares to leave her small hometown that, according to her, has 300 people living in it, to Toronto to attend University of Toronto in the Fall. She identifies herself as a lesbian, and we see her having sex with another young woman, Chelsea, with whom she’d flirted since the 8th grade. As she celebrates her 18th birthday, Elliot’s friend brings hallucinogenic mushrooms, which Elliot intakes. Just as she says that she feels no effect, she sees a woman suddenly appear next to her, who says is the older version of her. Elliot laughs and brushes off the idea that she’s seeing her older self, but is then proven wrong when her older self gives details that only she herself would know.
Young Elliot is intrigued at the fact that she’s seeing her older self, and asks for details about her life decades down the road. She’s disappointed when her older self reveals that she’s not married with kids by the time she reaches 40, but instead is a single PhD student. During their night of bonding experience, older Elliott encourages younger Elliott to spend more time with her mother and siblings before she leaves home for Toronto to begin her new life, as well as to avoid a guy named Chad, who younger Elliot didn’t even meet yet, at all costs. Though she’s confused, younger Elliot agrees. Older Elliot then saves her number in her younger self’s phone under the name ‘My Old Ass’.
The following morning, under some weird circumstances, younger Elliot meets Chad, who reveals he works for her father. She finds herself attracted to him, which leads to her confusion of her sexuality and identity. Her friend reassures her that her being attracted to a man doesn’t make her any less queer, which makes her relieved and reassured of being accepted. Nevertheless, younger Elliot is confused by her growing feelings for Chad. Though she initially tries to follow her older self’s advice to avoid him at all costs, she couldn’t due to unforeseen circumstances. Each time she tried to look for things wrong in him, but there was literally nothing wrong with him. He was perfect. He was a gentleman.
After spending the day together and getting to know each other better, younger Elliot has sex with Chad, her first experience having ‘dick sex’. Chad is so good to her that before initiating intimacy, he asks her for permission and whether she was sure she wanted to do the deed. Older Elliot appears again. Younger Elliot is desperate for answers as to why older Elliot advocated for her to stay away from Chad. Though hesitant, older Elliot reveals that there’s actually absolutely nothing wrong with him; that he’s actually perfect. But he will die, and there will be nothing that she will be able to do to save him. Older Elliot told younger Elliot to avoid Chad because she didn’t want her to experience the pain of losing him.
Older Elliot never reveals to her younger self Chad’s cause of death, nor does she reveal when exactly he will pass away. But throughout the movie, it’s implied that he will pass away due to cancer. He talked about his grandfather, who passed away due to cancer, and he planned to attend University Of Toronto, the same school Elliot was to attend, to study cancer research. Because older Elliot said that his death was inevitable and there was nothing younger Elliot could do to save him, it’s safe to assume that he died due to an illness. Nevertheless, younger Elliot decided not to listen to older Elliot’s advice to stay away from Chad, and instead starts a loving and caring relationship with him, knowing full well that they won’t get their ‘happily ever after’.
Chad then disrupts Elliot’s exchange with her older self as he returns her sweater. Much to the surprise of both Elliots, Chad is able to see older Elliot. It was always assumed that she wasn’t real; that she was a hallucination that Elliot sees when she’s high. Chad is not just able to see older Elliot, but converse with her as well. Young Elliot introduces her older self as her ‘uncle’, Michelle. Older Elliot leaves the two, but before she does, she tearfully hugs Chad, as though it’s their last goodbye. Older Elliot then leaves one last voicemail to her younger self, encouraging her to not live for the past or for the future, but rather for the present, and that to love and be loved by Chad is a gift.
Something to think about…
When I first saw the trailer for ‘My Old Ass’, I thought it was your typical coming-of-age teenage movie. It seemed as though I was little too old for this genre. But it had Aubrey Plaza as the star, as well as Megan Park as the writer and director of the movie. And if Margot Robbie is the producer of the movie and believed in it enough to finance it, I believed I had to give it a shot and watch the movie. If it were to be a waste, it’d be only 88 minutes of my time wasted.
I was actually pleasantly surprised at how good ‘My Old Ass’. The movie was sweet, and it had its funny moments; until the very end, when old Elliot reveals Chad’s fate. Right up until the very end of the movie, it leaves guessing. The most important question that we’re left asking ourselves while watching the movie is, ‘What the f*ck is wrong with Chad, and how is he going to break our girl’s heart?’ Then we find out that there’s nothing wrong with him; that he’s perfect. But he’s still going to break Elliot’s heart in another way – by dying. And not of an old age. He will pass away before the age of 40, and we know that it seems like an eternity when you’re an 18 year old, but it’s actually not that far gone when you really come to think of it. It’s not enough time when you love someone and want to share your life with them.
With that said, ‘My Old Ass’, more particularly the ending of ‘My Old Ass’ leaves its audience to ask questions about their own lives. I was left to ask myself whether I’d do the same if I were in Elliot’s shoes. If my 18 year old self were to see the older version of me who told me that I was to meet someone that would be the love of my life, but they were going to pass away, would I do the same as Elliot and still be with them all while knowing the other person’s fate? Would I still choose love over wanting the control of the situation?
I really wanted to say to myself that my 18 year old self wouldn’t listen to my older self. But as much as I wanted to be a wishful thinker, I’m also a realist. I looked at my 18 year old self and realized that that version of me would definitely take my older self’s advice. When I was 18 years old, I was lost. I was lonely. I was angry. The last thing I was looking for was to have to live in my life. I didn’t want it. I didn’t feel I deserved it. 18 was a difficult year for me. It was the year I was raped. I didn’t love myself. I didn’t love anyone around me; nor I didn’t love the world. I didn’t want anyone to love me.
Maybe it wasn’t that I didn’t want it, but rather that I felt I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t feel like I had the capability to love and be loved by someone else. It wasn’t an option for me. I met my husband in my early 20’s, and it seemed even impossible with him. At the time, I was all about flings, one night stands, and just plain fun. My husband wasn’t my exception. He was someone who I was ready to give up on, but he wasn’t ready to give up on me. He was the first and only person that made me believe that love is alive; that I deserve love just like anyone else; that I’m capable of love, and someone was capable to love me back.
Love lost…
When I think of love lost, immediately think of Michelle Williams, Meryl Streep, Lea Michele and Ariana Grande. Meryl Streep lost John Holland Cazale to a battle with cancer. Michelle Williams lost her former boyfriend and father to her daughter, Matilda, Heath Ledger in 2008 to a drug overdose. Lea Michele lost her boyfriend, Cory Monteith, in 2013 to a drug overdose. And Ariana Grande lost her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, to a drug over dose. All of these women have gone on to find love again after loss, but the road wasn’t easy, to say the least.
Meryl Streep went on to marry Don Gummer in 1978. The two had four children together, including Grace Jane Gummer, who’s now married to Mark Ronson. Michelle Williams went on to marry Phil Elverum, who went through his own loss in 2016 when his wife, Geneviève Castrée, passed away in 2016. Williams and Elverum married in 2018, but divorced the following year. Williams then married Thomas Kail. The two have two children together. Lea Michele married Zandy Reich following Monteith’s death, and the two now have two children together. And finally, Ariana Grande went on to marry realtor, Dalton Gomez in 2021, and they were married until 2024. She’s now in a relationship with her ‘Wicked’ co-star, Ethan Slater. Grande and Miller were broken up by the time of his death, but she was grief-stricken by his sudden death. She broke off her engagement to Pete Davidson shortly after news broke of Miller’s death to properly grief her loss.
Throughout the years, the women had opened up about their lives lost.
Meryl Streep said:
‘The death is still very much with me. It has forced me to confront my own mortality, and once you do that, you look at things differently. I didn’t get over it. I don’t want to get over it. No matter what you do, the pain is always there in some recess of your mind, and it affects everything that happens afterwards. I think you can assimilate the pain and go on without making an obsession of it.’
Michelle Williams said:
Every time I really miss him and wonder where he’s gone, I just look at her (Matilda). I can talk about grief, because that’s mine, about single parenting, about trying to balance work and kids. But what I don’t have to talk about is what happened between Heath and me in our relationship. Brokeback Mountain was an unrepeatable moment in time, a very charmed time in my life. I was in love. I was in a movie I was proud to be a part of and with a beautiful, brand new baby. Everything was good in that moment.’
Lea Michele said:
‘He was not his addiction — unfortunately, it won. But that wasn’t who he was. Cory made me feel like a queen every day. From the minute he said, ‘I’m your boyfriend,’ I loved every day, and I thank him for being the best boyfriend and making me feel so beautiful.’
Ariana Grande said:
‘By no means was what we had perfect, but, like, f–k. He was the best person ever, and he didn’t deserve the demons he had. I was the glue for such a long time, and I found myself becoming… less and less sticky. The pieces just started to float away.’
And yet…
These are 4 very different women of different generations. They only have one thing in common, which is that they all lost their partners by circumstances they couldn’t control; in the same exact way that Elliot didn’t have control over Chad’s death in ‘My Old Ass’. And I’d never imagine that neither of these women ever regretted being in love with their deceased partners. But did you ever hear of anyone who regretted being in love with their deceased partner following their death? I have.
If you’re a fan of ‘Sex And The City’ and watched its spinoff show, ‘And Just Like That’, you have too. That entire show was questionable. I really don’t understand why it needed to be made in the first place. All the actors involved can’t be out of money already. They’ve been working ever since the show ended since 2004. I’ve seen some of the projects they were each involved in in the 20 years since the show ended. The fans weren’t asking for it, and those that watched it were ‘hate-watching’ it. So much so that it keeps getting renewed. We were pretty happy with the endings Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte each got in the ‘Sex And The City’ finale. There was absolutely no need to continue their stories. We’d all actually have preferred if they didn’t continue.
But this isn’t a blog post reviewing the show, or any show or movie for that matter. This is a reflection. It’s a reflection on Carrie Bradshaw’s journey of grief, which was very much unlike that of the 4 women mentioned who also lost their partners in real life. Carrie Bradshaw, however, isn’t a real person. She a character on the show that I think is worth mentioning. The reason being is that her journey with grief, as seen in the first two seasons of ‘And Just Like That’s, is unlike something I’d ever imagine.
In the very first episode of ‘And Just Like That’, we see Carrie living a domestic life with Mr. Big. This was the life she always wish to have with him ever since they met in the 90’s, but never seemed to be had. Whenever there was a slight bit of happiness between them, something always seemed to break them. When Carrie wasn’t with Big, she was craving him, and he craved her. And yet, when they were together, she always looked for something different. It was mostly evident when Carrie and Big were having an affair and were cheating on their respective partners. When Natasha, Big’s wife at the time, caught Carrie in her house after Carrie had sex with Big in Natasha’s own bed, Carrie said in a voiceover saying that she thought she’d be the one hurt in the situation; not Natasha. She wanted to have everything Natasha had with Big. But when she finally did have it, she got bored and went out looking for something different…with Aiden, her ex that she cheated on with Big.
In a nutshell, Carrie wanted what she couldn’t have, and she only really wanted Big when she couldn’t have him. The idea of trying to get him when she couldn’t was exciting to her. I personally think that the affair she engaged with Big while he was married to Natasha excited her. Natasha was a much more mature woman at 25 than Carrie ever was at 35, and maybe that was why Big married Natasha instead of Carrie. Natasha knew what she wanted right from the get-go, and she was the no bullsh*t, what you see is what you get, take it or leave it, type of gal. There was no manipulating that could be done to ever change her. It didn’t mean that Big and Natasha were right for each other, because they weren’t. Big didn’t deserve Natasha. He deserved Carrie. Carrie and Big deserved each other.
Seeing Carrie and Big so domesticated in the first episode of ‘And Just Like That’s was new to us, the longtime fans of ‘Sex And The City’. We finally got to see them live the life they always wanted for themselves with each other. But, of course, it wasn’t meant to be. Simplicity was never their thing. Their love story finally ends for good when Big dies of a heart attack at the very end of episode 1 of the spinoff show, or revival show; whatever you want to call it.
Carrie spent the entire first season grieving her deceased husband. She also spent the season grieving the end of her friendships with Samantha and Stanford. Samantha Jones didn’t star on ‘And Just Like That’s because Kim Cattrall, the woman behind Samantha Jones, never wanted to reprise her role, mainly due to her friction with Sarah Jessica Parker, who played Carrie Bradshaw. She did, however, make a brief appearance during season 2 finale. She was allegedly payed $1 million for her 1 minute long cameo. Samantha moved to London and left her friendships behind after a friction with Carrie that had to do with work. Stanford Blatch appeared in the first three episodes of ‘And Just Like That’. The character was written off due to Willie Garson’s passing in 2021. Stanford moved left his life in New York behind and moved to Japan without warning. He only left a letter to Carrie after the fact.
In one episode of ‘And Just Like That’, goes to an appointment with a plastic surgeon. The appointment wasn’t meant for her, but rather for her friend and Stanford’s ex-husband, Anthony. But because the surgeon, played by Jonathan Groff, was an ageist, he mistakenly assumed the appointment was for Carrie. Out of interest, she asks the surgeon to show her the face he could make for her had she agreed to do a plastic surgery. He does and tells her that she’d look 15 years younger. She gazes at her face that she sees on the screen and says, ‘I liked these 15 years’, referring to her marriage to Big.
The first season of ‘And Just Like That’ represented Carrie’s grief and mourning. The sexpand season represented her moving forward with her life following Big’s death. The second season saw Carrie reconnect with her old love, Aiden. They resume their relationship, which couldn’t have been more perfect and ALMOST drama-free. Nevertheless, Aiden breaks up with Carrie because he felt his relationship with Carrie was getting in the way of him being fully present for his teenage boys. But before the relationship ended, Carrie was talking to Miranda about her relationship with Aiden. To be more exact, she spoke with Miranda of how her new relationship made her feel about Big, and how she couldn’t help but wonder…was Big one big mistake?
I was astonished when I heard her say this. It wasn’t that she moved in following her husband’s passing. It was that her new relationship with Aiden made her completely question her entire relationship with Big. It’s okay to move forward in your life following a partner’s death. Their life ended, not yours. But to completely disregard it once you get into a new relationship seems so disgusting to me. Big had his flaws, of course. He treated Carrie like complete first throughout their relationship, But that was the life she chose for herself. No matter how toxic they both were for one another, especially in their early years, there was no denying that they loved each other. How could Carrie completely disregard the relationship she had with Big and question it once she moved on?
Thankfully, I’ve never, ever been in this situation, and I hope to never be in that situation. All I know is that throughout the years of my struggles with epilepsy, infertility and mental health, my husband didn’t know if I’d survive the life I lived; more so because he was always worried about seizure would kill me or that I’d end my own life because it just got too hard. And because I don’t know much of anything about losing a partner to an early death, I use media more than ever for reference.
Lea Michele used her pain of losing Cory Monteith and turned it into art. As she grieved her loss, her character on ‘Glee’ also suffered the loss of losing Finn, her ex-boyfriend. His character’s cause of death was never revealed on the show, but the grief that Rachel Berry was feeling was real and evident. And when it came down to writing Monteith’s tribute episode in season 5, episode 3, she was allowed in the writing room. We see that Rachel moved forward with her life and got married to her old flame, Jesse St. James at the end of the show. But did her moving forward mean that she’d forgotten her love for Finn? No. I don’t think so. And Michele hasn’t forgotten her lost love either. Up until the 10th year anniversary of his death, Michele always made sure to pay tribute to her deceased love even though she herself got married and had two children since then. Ariana Grande never forgot her old flame either, even though she’s since gotten married and divorce and is now in a new relationship. Throughout always pays tribute to Mac Miller in her music and business. She always found a way.
Is feeling love for a short time worth the grief you’ll feel for your lifetime?
As the saying goes – it’s better to have love and lost than to have never loved at all. And there’s a scenario where you find brand new information that could’ve hurt your relationship had they not gone. I recently watched ‘Good Grief’, starring Dan Levy, who also wrote, directed and produced the movie. In the movie, following character’s, Marc, husband’s death, he finds out that his husband led an entirely second life that didn’t include him. He questioned absolutely everything about the marriage following his finding out. The person who told him of that, said something to him that really made you think of love lost – avoiding sadness is avoiding the love.
Love is messy. Falling in love is a risk you take. In the movie franchise, ‘To All The Boys I Loved Before’, Lara Jean breaks things off with her boyfriend Peter because she’s afraid he’s going to break her heart. Falling is love is a true gift, and you should never let it go. You should go on and experience it, no matter how much time you have with them. Even if the other person breaks your heart, it’s a risk that you take when you fall madly in love with someone. And it’s worth it. I promise you, it’s worth it. Grief is the price you pay for love, and that’s something that ‘My Old Ass’ tells you in the very end of the film. Young Elliot took a chance because she wanted to experience the love she had for Chad, and the love he had for her, because the short amount of time that she has with him is worth it to her.
I believe that the story was more about older Elliot more so than the younger version of her. She was in so much pain of losing the love of her life that she encouraged her younger self to avoid that love at all costs, because she didn’t want her younger self to feel the same pain she did following Chad’s death. She moved on and revealed that she had a girlfriend, but it didn’t mean that she stopped feeling the pain of losing her old love. Maybe Chad being able to see her was exactly what she needed in her journey with grief; not only to say one final goodbye, but to also realize that loving Chad was the greatest thing she ever had in her life; that loving him and being loved by him was worth losing him; that she shouldn’t wish that they hadn’t met or that she hadn’t fallen in love with him. And it’s not just about changing the circumstances of falling in love with someone who you won’t get to spend of your life with, but rather your entire life’s fate. Everything happens for a reason, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to be in control of everything. Life is general is a risk you take. Living your life is a risk you take, and…
It was all worth it in the end…
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