A teenager meets her older self

 

     If you could go meet an older version of yourself, what would you want to ask? If the question intrigues you, you may find amusement in My Old Ass, a fantasy movie in which an 18-year-old (Maisy Stella) meets herself when she's on the brink of turning 40.

     Aubrey Plaza plays the older version of Stella's Elliott. The older Elliott appears when the younger Elliott drinks hallucinatory tea made from mushrooms. 

    Stella and Plaza don't look alike, but director Megan Park dodges the issue, focusing more on emotional dynamics than appearance. 

     For me, the main attraction here is Plaza, who has evolved into an interesting actress. But Plaza's presence in the story is limited by a plot that focuses mostly on young Elliott.

       Teenage Elliott identifies as gay, but develops an increasingly affectionate relationship with Chad (Percy Hynes White), a young man who's spending the summer on a nearby farm. The relationship occurs after the older Elliott warns her younger self not to fall for anyone named Chad. 

     As Maisy discovers the world of gender fluidity, she wonders what her attraction to Chad means; the movie suggests that people don't always know who they are or who they might become.

    Stella portrays Maisy as a young woman trying to find her footing as she prepares to leave her Canadian home, a cranberry farm where she lives with her mother (Maria Dizzia), father (Alain Goulem), and two brothers (Seth Isaac Johnson and (Carter Trozzolo). 

   The film includes a big reveal, and Park easily shifts to sentiment without allowing the film to become cloying. Ultimately, My Old Ass overcomes Elliott's more annoying tendencies and delivers a message about gathering rosebuds before reality creates its inevitable ambush. 

   Deep? Not really, but the message nicely fits a  slender piece of work.

   A footnote: For many, the idea of viewing a 39-year-old ass as "old" might seem a stretch mark too far. 

No reason to open this book

The Book of Henry doesn't seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be and winds up abusing some serious issues.

Let me share several things that I hate to see in movies: 1. Loving but otherwise incompetent parents who are raising kids who are smarter than their elders. 2. Needlessly quirky touches -- say a house in the woods that a genius kid has assembled out of discarded household items. 3. Confusion about whether a movie wants to be kid friendly or adult serious.

Sadly, The Book of Henry commits all of these sins, the most grievous of which is its inability to encompass a variety of plot threads while also adding thriller elements about an ill-defined case of child abuse.

The Book of Henry isn't easy to write about without including spoilers, but parents who plan on taking kids should know that the movie includes the death of a child. If that ruins the movie for you, so be it. I'll say no more about it.

Director Colin Trevorrow, who wrote the screenplay for Jurassic World and who directed the well-received Safety Not Guaranteed, shifts from comedy to drama in ways that create an atmosphere that's shot through with improbabilities.

Absent much to say about the plot, I'll tell you about the characters. Eleven-year-old Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) lives with his single mom (Naomi Watts) and his younger brother (Jacob Tremblay) in a suburban New York town.

Mom works as a waitress. In addition to all his other talents, Henry excels at finance. He manages Mom's funds.

Not only is Henry a whiz at practical matters, he also holds his mother to a high moral standard, which he prosaically states: When others are being abused, we're obligated to intervene, Henry says.

Watts struggles to play a single mom who has turned her oldest son into a helpmate, a form of parental irresponsibility that sometimes occurs with single parents, but -- in this case -- has been carried to unbelievable extremes.

Watts's character seems to have only one friend, another waitress (Sarah Silverman), a woman who sports a large, flowery tattoo above her exposed cleavage, who may be an alcoholic and who hardly needed to be in the movie at all.

The movie's thriller component involves one of Henry's classmates (Maddie Ziegler), a girl who lives next door to Henry with her widowed stepfather (Dean Norris), who also happens to be the town's police commissioner.

In Rear-Window style, Henry observes the house next door and learns that Norris' Glenn Sickleman is abusing his stepdaughter. Henry documents his findings in a diary of sorts, the book that gives the film its title. He also authors a plan to halt the abuse.

Working from a screenplay by Gregg Hurwitz, Trevorrow fails to wring much emotion out of the story's soap-operatic elements. As a thriller, the movie comes across as absurdly twisted. Worst of all, it short-changes issues that deserve serious exploration.

Enough said.