My Old Ass review – time-bending coming-of-age comedy with real heart and depth

Eighteen-year-old Elliott (a fizzing, star-making turn from Maisy Stella) is poised on the brink of the next stage of her life. She’s about to leave her home and her family of “third-generation cranberry farmers” in Muskoka, Ontario, and head to the city for college. To celebrate the fact, she camps overnight on an island and takes a bunch of mushrooms with her besties. And that’s when things get weird. The shrooms open some kind of cosmic portal and Elliott is visited by her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza). And Elliott’s “old ass” has some advice for her younger self. It’s a fun, silly premise, but while there’s no shortage of stoner humour, the film is deeper and considerably more satisfying than the drug-baked adolescent wisecracking might initially suggest. Stella and Plaza are a match for crackling charisma, even if the physical resemblance doesn’t entirely convince. Together, they make light work of the film’s heavyweight question: having caught a glimpse of the future, how much of the present would you decide to change?

• In UK and Irish cinemas