On her 18th birthday, Elliot (Maisie Stella) experiments with mushrooms and comes face to face with her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). The older Elliot offers some guidance to her younger self – but how much of her advice is too much?
If you could go back in time and give yourself some advice, what would it be? “Hydration” is just one of the pearls of wisdom imparted in this film from writer-director Megan Park, who takes the premise to its funny and poignant extremes in this unconventional coming-of-age film.
Our heroine is Elliot, whom we meet when she is 18 and played by Maisie Stella (in her first film). She’s confident, sexually confident, and self-centered with glee as she goes on a mushroom trip with friends while her family waits at home with her birthday cake. But her journey takes an unexpected turn when her older self (Aubrey Plaza) shows up to chat, and she miraculously stays in touch via text even after the trip is over.
Elliot and her friends feel like complete individuals.
This is technically a sci-fi movie, since it’s about time travel, but it has no interest in explaining how Elliot meets herself, beyond a wave of hallucinations. In fact, she’s more interested in exploring what it means to be young and on the verge of everything, and what a person may or may not want to know about the future they’re about to embark on. Is everyone okay? What mistakes will they make that they might want to avoid? The older Elliott keeps her advice very general, except for one thing: “Stay away from Chad.” As the younger Elliot soon meets a likable neighbor named Chad (Percy Hines White), she begins to question this prohibition, wondering if her older self really knows more than she does.
Park has a talent for bringing teenagers to life while maintaining all their quirks, and not flattening them with any adult-imposed stereotypes. Elliot and her friends feel like complete individuals, seeming life-wise one moment, and hopelessly naive the next (as when Elliot learns, for example, that her family is preparing to sell their farm). They are lively, flamboyant creatures, dreamily depicted amid sunny landscapes and floating on lakes, quarreling and amusingly teasing each other.
The result is essentially an entertaining film, but this little twist of sci-fi gives Elliot a way to take a broader look at her life and figure out what really matters, whether that’s family, friendship, or just finding a really good life. Skin care routine.
Smart and sharp enough to balance the simple yet profound sweetness of its message. All we have is time, and this film poignantly reminds us that it matters how we spend it.
