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Here’s the answer for “Wordle” #1183 on September 14, as well as a few hints, tips, and clues to help you solve it yourself.

Oh hey there! If you’re here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we’re serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today’s answer.

If you just want to be told today’s word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for September 14’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.

Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:

Covering a wide range of subjects.

Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?

There are no letters that appear twice

Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…

Today’s Wordle starts with the letter B.

The Wordle answer today is…

Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today’s Wordle is…

BROAD.

Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Wordle.

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Connections is a New York Times word game that’s all about finding the “common threads between words.” How to solve the puzzle.

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that’s captured the public’s attention. The game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for September 14’s Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections?

The NYT‘s latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications’ Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here’s a hint for today’s Connections categories

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

Yellow: Creating a wine

Green: Things to activate a console or machine

Blue: Common words placed before another

Purple: Types of kings

Here are today’s Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:

Yellow: Wine Bottle Info

Green: Console Inputs

Blue: Prefixes

Purple: ___King

Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today’s Connections #461 is…

What is the answer to Connections today

Wine Bottle Info: GRAPE, REGION, VINTAGE, WINERY

Console Inputs: BUTTON, KNOB, SLIDER, SWITCH

Prefixes: PRO, RETRO, SUB, SUPER

___King: BURGER, CALIFORNIA, LION, PROM

Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.

If you’re looking for more puzzles, Mashable’s got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Connections.

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In ‘The Killer’s Game’, Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella have to survive an onslaught of the world’s best assassins, including one played by Terry Crews. So we played ‘Slash or Pass: Assassins’ with them to see who they feel their characters could out-assassin.

In ‘The Killer’s Game’, Dave Bautista and Sofia Boutella have to survive an onslaught of the world’s best assassins, including one played by Terry Crews. So we played ‘Slash or Pass: Assassins’ with them to see who they feel their characters could out-assassin.

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Shuchi Talati’s Sundance hit “Girls Will be Girls” is a masterclass in mother-daughter tension in awkward adolescence. Film review.

Girlhood, in all its pain, wonder, and perplexity, is a complicated business to accurately capture on screen. It’s so confusing some times. Relationships between mothers and daughters during adolescence? Same deal. From Lady Bird to Mermaids, coming-of-age films about girls often explore the awkwardness of early sexual experiences alongside the tense, precarious relationships between girls and their mothers.

The debut feature and Sundance Film Festival hit from Indian writer-director Shuchi Talati, Girls Will Be Girls explores this complex time through understated, intense performances from Preeti Panigrahi and Kani Kusruti, respectfully intimate cinematography and editing, and a minimalist, loaded script. It’s a stunning, poignant film that lends agency and inquisitive empowerment to its young protagonist, whose “no bullshit” philosophy brings a fresh perspective to portrayals of adolescence.

It’s a period of conflict, anxiety, miscommunication, pressure, and misdirected angst. Don’t act like you don’t remember.

What is Girls Will Be Girls about?

At the core of the film is 16-year-old Mira (Panigrahi), a studious, determined girl whose burgeoning exploration of sexual desire and first love is thrown into confusing, infuriating disarray by her mother Anila (Kusruti), whose own adolescence wasn’t as full of such awakenings.

Set in the 1990s, the film introduces Mari as a model student at her conservative boarding school in the Himalayas. She’s head prefect, a stickler for the rules, acing her grades, and pulling up other students on their uniform errors. Teachers even trust her with the school keys. But she’s quite a solitary person, favouring studies over friendship. When Mira develops a crush on 17-year-old classmate Sri (Kesav Binoy Kiron), she’s resolved to follow her physical impulses — importantly, on her terms. However, her mother’s constant presence frustrates her, impeding her yearning for maturity and experience with Sri (and remember, this is the ’90s, so they’ve got no social media to chat after school on, only parental landlines).

But it goes further than pure supervision. Anila’s strange closeness and (let’s be real) flirtation with Sri triggers Mira’s jealousy and unease, driving an awkward, loaded wedge between mother and daughter. With Talati’s simmering script in the hands of the film’s extraordinarily talented leads, director of photography Jih-E Peng uses elegant cinematography to amplify both the tension and tenderness between them.

Preeti Panigrahi and Kani Kusruti are magnificent

Girls Will Be Girls paints an exquisite portrait of complicated mother-daughter mechanics in the teen years, with exceptional performances from Panigrahi and Kusruti. As Mira, Panigrahi imbues her character with confidence, determination, and an unwavering stare. She privately defies societal expectations of teen girls while operating well within their parameters publicly. Meanwhile, Kusruti conceals a dynamic force of a woman within Anila, one protective of her daughter while seemingly mourning a teen awakening of her own.

Despite the main narrative concerning Mira’s coming-of-age, the constant tension between her and Anila proves the heart of the film. Mira covertly attempts to buy time for sexual experimentation with Sri, frustrated by her lack of freedom. Anila, craving attention within her own marriage to Mira’s perpetually absent father, begins to strangely compete with her daughter whenever Sri is around. A subtle and deeply resentful battle of access and maturity is weighed between mother and daughter, in which Anila constantly takes up the space Mira yearns for.

The thing is, both Mira and Anila know exactly what each other are doing. Every time. They don’t directly say what they’re thinking about each other, but anyone who’s had a mother-daughter relationship will know those looks. Their charged interactions, edited to perfection by Amrita David, radiate with annoyance, loaded comments, and fierce glaring, not directly acknowledging their issues but making their disdain or defiance clear. Panigrahi and Kusruti’s performances range from playfulness to suspicion to suppressed rage, all without ever screaming at each other. It’s impeccable, and a different kind of anger than explored in Everything Everywhere All At Once but just as palpable. 

Girls Will Be Girls gently explores early sexual experiences without judgment

Amid this tension over space and maturity, Girls Will Be Girls gives Mira ample time to embrace and investigate her sexual awakening, an awkward, relatable journey performed with bold courage by Panigrahi and Kiron, and sensitively handled by Talati, Peng, and David.

A true academic, Mira is determined to explore her newfound desires with all the scrutiny of an exam to study for. She’s both fascinated by all of it and self-conscious of Sri’s experience. Captured with handheld, intimate close ups and sound design, Mira’s exploration feels non-judgmental. Talati doesn’t seek to either glorify or vilify, letting the camera simply sit on minuscule moments of analysis, closeness, forgiveness, and betrayal.

In a confident, considerate performance from Kiron, Sri channels a maturity beyond his years, unfussed by Anila’s concerns and easily assuaging her. And in a world saturated with teen dramas and coming-of-age films where girls are robbed of their agency, Mira’s confidence and Sri’s respect for her boundaries are incredibly refreshing.

Girls Will Be Girls demonstrates how boys are protected, girls are blamed

Though it’s not the main storyline, one of the persistent realities underlining the film is the double standard of how boys and girls’ behaviour is considered within the school environment, a place which fosters misogynistic actions when it should be a vital base for unlearning them. Talati contrasts the strict conservatism of the boarding school — the left-right-left marching orders over the opening credits, wide shots of students standing to attention in perfect order at assembly — with both the burgeoning sexual tension between teenagers and the rampant harassment girls suffer from their male classmates.

Male students’ abhorrent behaviour is largely allowed to run by the school while female students are blamed — especially for their skirt length. “Be careful with boys,” the girls are instructed by their teacher. “Don’t talk to them more than necessary. You’re getting older, you need to be careful.” Talati wields sound as an important tool here, thanks to sound team Carole Verner, Laure Arto, and Colin Favre-Bulle; boys’ whispering is easily audible in the silent classrooms and halls, with only the sound of a camera snapping unmasking the act of upskirting.

Whe Mira rejects the advances of her classmate, his vengeance is supported not only by his male peers but the school environment itself. Mira is shamed by her teacher as being “inappropriate” for hanging out with Sri. When Mira endures a terrifying experience, she doesn’t call the police or the teachers, she calls Alina. It’s through Mira’s experiences that Girls Will Be Girls shows how vital education institutions are to fighting these systems of oppression. As Rachel Thompson writes for Mashable, “Tackling male violence means fighting misogyny on a societal level. That means educating boys and men about masculinity, gender roles, male entitlement, and their behaviour towards women and girls in all contexts, public or private.”

Ultimately, the film isn’t a lecture on this, but instead uses showing not telling to make it clear. Girls Will Be Girls manages to gently but authentically explore the complexities of girlhood through excellent performances, a minimalist script that trusts its actors, and superb, close cinematography. It’s a tough job, to find unique ways to explore teen sexuality in cinema, but Talati defines a new perspective with a truly mesmerising film.

Girls Will Be Girls hits cinemas in the U.S. Sept. 13 and in the UK and Ireland on Sept. 20.

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Laverne Cox, Joey King, Brianne Tju, Keith Powers and Chase Stokes break down the themes of privilege and choice presented in their new film, ‘Uglies.’

Laverne Cox, Joey King, Brianne Tju, Keith Powers and Chase Stokes break down the themes of privilege and choice presented in their new film, ‘Uglies.’

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“Daily Show” host Jordan Klepper has broken down the hypocrisy of Republican reactions to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris.

“Daily Show” host Jordan Klepper has broken down the hypocrisy of Republican reactions to Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Kamala Harris.

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The TV adaptation of Lisa Taddeo’s book “Three Women” shows female sexuality in all its power and stigma. TV review.

This review discusses sexual violence, abuse, and mentions eating disorders. 

Five years after the publication of Lisa Taddeo’s bestselling non-fiction book, Three Women, its TV treatment has finally hit the small screen.

Starring She’s Gotta Have It‘s DeWanda Wise, Big Little Lies star Shailene Woodley, GLOW‘s Betty Gilpin and In My Skin star Gabrielle Creevy, the series — just like Taddeo’s book — looks not just at the relatively unexplored and often oversimplified world of female sexuality, but also how women are punished for these desires in a patriarchal world. Taddeo co-wrote the series with Tell Me Lies‘ Chisa Hutchinson, with House of Cards producer Laura Eason as showrunner.

Similar to the painstaking reportage Taddeo undertook to write her book, Three Women‘s 10-episode run (each running at roughly an hour) takes a really deep dive into the story, with mixed results. 

What is Three Women about? 

The series brings to our screens the stories from the near decade Taddeo spent interviewing three American women about their sexual desires, how society has impacted the way they manifest, and how they feel about expressing them. 

The book was released in 2019 during the height of the #MeToo movement. Taddeo’s incredibly in-depth study into three real women – Maggie, Lina, and Sloane — and their bodily, emotional, and sexual desires aligned perfectly with a wider narrative of women demanding to be heard. 

Who plays the Three Women?

Creevy plays Maggie, who reflects on an abusive, coercive relationship between herself and her teacher years prior. The series covers said real-life teacher Aaron Knodel’s trial, and the misogyny embedded in the justice system, especially when it comes to crimes of sexual violence. Creevy carries the story with a steely innocence, knowing that what happened to her was wrong but often feeling silenced and bullied in response to her efforts to seek justice. 

Wise is striking as Sloane, a restaurant owner and mother who deviates from her husband Richard’s (Blair Underwood) rules when it comes to their polyamorous relationship; he predominantly chooses her matches. Sloane struggles with feeling limited without choice, especially when she meets Will (Blair Redford) and forges a new connection — only to be met with slut-shaming comments from different people in her life, including her husband. Wise navigates this performance with warmth, grace, and humour, but balances it with incredibly precise fury when needed — and boy, is it needed. Though Sloane’s story is relatively underserved throughout the series, she delivers of the show’s most impactful lines about the stigma, guilt and shame around desire: “If [it] makes me a bad person, even if it makes me the worst person, I still want what I want.” 

The character of Indiana homemaker Lina is brought to life with soft vulnerability by Gilpin. Lina is left wanting due to the lack of intimacy in her marriage, and starts to seek it elsewhere as desire starts to eat at her. Additionally, she harbours intense, complicated feelings for her high school boyfriend, who neglected her after she was raped as a teenager.

Lina’s friendship with writer Gia (a character played by Woodley and based on Taddeo, who is expanded upon considerably in the TV series) is fraught, intense, and dysfunctional — a source of support but also codependence. Woodley’s Gia is compelling, as she navigates grief from losing her parents at a young age, as well as other fertility and health issues while fighting to finish her book before she runs out of money. Her portrayal of these issues is important, and devastating at points, but ultimately detracts from the stories of the three women that Taddeo so carefully and artfully portrayed in her book.

How does the Three Women TV adaptation hold up?

In the book, Taddeo switches perspectives between chapters to hear from the different women, but in the show, the hour-long episodes make the switching difficult to follow and for the viewer to feel close to each story. Each woman’s account requires time and sensitivity, and these jarring roadblocks don’t allow time to sit with the complexities of their sex lives. A key issue with Three Women is honouring the dramatisation of these true stories without veering into documentary territory, or stretching out the narrative too much. Three Women is, unfortunately, at times guilty of the latter.

It makes sense to flesh out more of Taddeo’s book in a 10-episode TV series, but it also results in us spending episodes away from each story, meaning narratives as intense as Maggie’s disappear from our screen for too long. Maggie’s story explores a much darker area of grooming, consent, and abuse. We witness her teacher’s use of love-bombing and manipulation in haunting scenes in episode 8 (fittingly named “Twilight”), where the show explores the role of novels like Stephenie Meyer’s romanticise abusive power dynamics.

We also see the appalling ways that survivors are treated when they report such abuse, with Maggie being asked what she wore when she was around Knodel, as well as endless interrogations around her own morality. Like the 2020 TV series A Teacher, which also offered a nuanced portrayal of teacher-student grooming, Maggie’s story stands as a poignant example of how feelings of desire can be manipulated.

Three Women covers myriad aspects of female health issues, sexuality, and desire on screen

That being said, while the pacing and characterisation choices might detract from the wider story, and the show is still ultimately limited in whose story gets to be told, Three Women does try to cover more variation on the female sexual experience than shows that precede it.

Through the series’ many, many sex scenes, we see examples of stealthing (an act of sexual violence when someone either lies about putting a condom on or removes it without the other person’s permission), period sex, as well as masturbation. It brings into sharp relief the acute, overwhelming nature of desire, causing us to reflect on the ways that society often shames women for these feelings. By seeing these cravings up close, as well as the way women are often violated by men’s desire, we are confronted with the realities of the female sexual experience – both the liberating and the damaging.  

When it comes to the duty Three Women pays to the stories told about women’s bodies, we also see the debilitating impact of endometriosis pain and the dismissive nature of both Lina’s husband and medical professionals about it. We also see Sloane’s grappling with an eating disorder as well as the aftermath of a miscarriage. 

So often, the stories told around women’s bodies, as well as on-screen portrayals of female desire, feel either sanitised, romanticised, or one-dimensional, leaving out the nuance, messiness, and guilt that come with living in a patriarchal society. Three Women hits back against this norm.

Three Women is ultimately an empowering watch

What’s refreshing about Three Women isn’t just its close look at so many areas of the sexual and desire spectrums for women, but also its focus on different women’s walks of life. While Sex and the City and Girls, for example, portrayed sexual exploration from a specifically metropolitan, New York City-centric, white point of view, Taddeo’s characters are based on real-life women from middle parts of America, including North Dakota and Indiana. The result is a more holistic portrayal of women’s sex lives — though it must be pointed out, three of the four lead actors are white women.

Ultimately, Three Women is about feeling heard and hearing others. All three women express the empowerment they feel at telling their story to someone, and Gia is empowered by hearing them. As Sloane tells Gia, “I’m tired of stories of women not winning.” 

It’s debatable whether any of the women “win” in a wider sense – but perhaps their stories being told, and the people the TV series will touch as a result, is a victory in itself.

How to watch: Three Women is now streaming on Starz.

If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.

If you feel like you’d like to talk to someone about your eating behavior, text “NEDA” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected with a trained volunteer or visit the National Eating Disorder Association website for more information.

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In Season 5, Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries” is looking into one of the biggest cases of all: the Roswell incident.

In Season 5, Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries” is looking into one of the biggest cases of all: the Roswell incident.

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“How to Die Alone,” created by and starring Natasha Rothwell, premieres Sept. 13 on Hulu, with new episodes every Friday. Review.

I can guarantee you you’ve never had a worse birthday than How to Die Alone‘s Melissa Jackson (Natasha Rothwell).

Her best friend Rory (Conrad Ricamora) ditches their birthday plans for a hookup. Her ex Alex (Jocko Sims) chooses that very day to send out his wedding invites. And on top of all of that, Mel straight-up dies. Just for three minutes, but it’s enough to make an impression.

Mel’s death and its circumstances — alone, crushed under furniture, and choking on a crab rangoon — prompt some serious soul-searching. As Mel sees it, her love life is nonexistent, her family doesn’t believe in her, and in some kind of cruel cosmic joke, she’s an airport employee who’s too scared to fly. Is this really the life she wants to flash before her eyes when she dies for real? No, no, it’s not.

Created by Rothwell, How to Die Alone takes Mel down a winding road of self-discovery, one full of hard truths, awkward romantic encounters, and just enough hope to keep her pushing for the life she deserves. The ensuing journey is hilarious, yes, but also a deeply candid portrait of a woman in the never-ending process of figuring it all out.

What’s How to Die Alone about?

Following her near-death experience, Mel decides to embrace her inner “boss-ass bitch.” At her job as a cart driver at New York’s JFK airport, that means trying to get into a management program — and quelling any feelings she may still have for Alex, who is also her boss. (If you think that sounds messy, just you wait.)

How to Die Alone‘s airport setting creates several opportunities for elaborate hijinks in the vein of workplace comedies like The Office or Superstore. A hunt for confiscated painkillers leads Mel and Rory deep into the bowels of JFK. Elsewhere, a terminal-wide lockdown forces Mel and Alex’s fiancée Julie (Chantel Riley) on an awkward side quest. However, as fun as these moments may be, How to Die Alone‘s workplace comedy side isn’t the show’s primary focus. It can occasionally chafe against the show’s more grounded core of Mel’s personal growth instead of complementing it. Thankfully, How to Die Alone figures out a balance between the two as its first season picks up steam, giving Rothwell space to deliver not just some great physical comedy but some seriously vulnerable work as well.

Natasha Rothwell is delightful and vulnerable in How to Die Alone.

Rothwell has always shined in supporting roles, from Insecure to The White Lotus. But in How to Die Alone, she gets to take center stage and creative control, helming the series alongside co-showrunner Vera Santamaria (Pen15, BoJack Horseman). The result is a performance that isn’t afraid to get messy or vulnerable, whether Mel is bemoaning her dating life — “Because of societal standards, I’m like human cilantro,” she tells her friends — or self-sabotaging in order to avoid being hurt down the line.

While Rothwell shines consistently throughout How to Die Alone, there are still some standout moments where she and her co-stars go above and beyond. Mel and Rory’s painful unpacking of their friendship in one episode is an absolutely devastating blowout. A tense Thanksgiving conversation between Mel and her brother Brian (Bashir Salahuddin) cuts deep and provides a much-needed opportunity for both characters to vent their frustrations. These are the kind of scenes that can only happen thanks to layered, complicated relationships between characters, and luckily, Rothwell and Santamaria keep Mel wrapped in an intricate web of connections that accrues more and more meaning as the show progresses.

Among these connections is a love triangle that slowly creeps to the forefront in How to Die Alone‘s final episodes. Our candidates are Alex, who still supports Mel even though she rejected him two years ago, and JFK ground crew member Terrance (KeiLyn Durrel Jones), Mel’s go-to conversational partner on her smoke breaks. In my mind, there’s a clear answer on who Mel should go with, but trust How to Die Alone to keep you guessing. Even when it’s playing up some classic rom-com tropes, the series may just turn around and hit you (and Mel) with a heartbreaking gut punch.

As juicy as Mel’s romantic endeavors can be, it’s her quest for personal happiness — whether that involves a man or not — that proves the most rewarding. She learns some fairly valuable life lessons throughout How to Die Alone, sprinkled amid quality one-liners and her many, many poor decisions, and it’s a treat to watch her find her footing alongside the series. Mel may not be ready to get on a plane yet, but Rothwell and How to Die Alone are ready to soar.

How to Die Alone premieres Sept. 13 on Hulu, with new episodes every Friday.

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Maisy Stella is a star on the rise in Megan Park’s sensational follow-up to “The Fallout,” “My Old Ass.” Review.

Daydreaming about what you’d tell your younger self is a fool’s game. Sure, we’d like to imagine bestowing words of wisdom, mind-blowing messages of solace, or maybe even stock tips to our past selves. But if middle-aged you abruptly stumbled across teen you, what would you really say? That’s the promising inciting incident of My Old Ass, a time-travel comedy from Megan Park, the brilliant writer/director behind the sensational (and underseen) The Fallout. 

Starring Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella as older and younger versions of the same Canadian woman, My Old Ass reminds us that though we’re older, we may not be all that wiser. And anyway, there’s something to be said for the reckless naiveté of youth. 

Though among this year’s Sundance darlings, the coming-of-age comedy — from Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment — doesn’t fall into maudlin navel-gazing or complicated artsy twists. Instead, it’s a briskly funny time-travel movie that bucks genre convention and allows its characters to be as charming as they are messy. 

My Old Ass rejects the cliched time-travel mission plot line. 

Time-travel movies mostly fall into three categories, all of them fixated on change for better or worse. There’s the Groundhog Day time-loop, where a hero repeats a cycle over and over until they get this one pivotal day right. There’s the Back to the Future model, where a fun-seeking dip in the past could irreparably change your future, even erasing you from existence. (See also: much of Doctor Who.) Then there are the many, many movies — be they Terminator or The Greatest Hits — that take the Quantum Leap approach: traveling back in time to set right what once went wrong! My Old Ass isn’t really any of these. And that’s wildly refreshing. 

This very different spin on time travel begins with the casting of Aubrey Plaza, who between Parks and Recreation, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and her chic yet surly interview persona, encapsulates a distinctive brand of elder millennial over-it. So the moment she shows up next to a bubbly, blonde Maisy Stella — 18-year-old Elliott, a small-town girl on the brink of booking it to the big city — you know this isn’t going to be your standard “save the future” adventure. Not that Plaza’s elder Elliott doesn’t try. 

While younger Elliott is out in the woods, celebrating her birthday with a shroom trip among friends, 39-year-old Elliott party crashes with some advice that is as admittedly cliched as it is true: Be nicer to your mom. Beyond this, “My Old Ass” (as she labels herself in teen Elliott’s cellphone contacts) refuses to speak much about the future, fearing this unplanned meeting could have massive consequences. She occasionally alludes to some major disasters to come, but her only warning is comically simple: Avoid Chad at all costs! 

Naturally, what follows is younger Elliott skinny-dipping into a meet-cute with a sweet boy named Chad (Wednesday‘s Percy Hynes White), with whom she shares an undeniable chemistry no matter how much she tries to ignore it.

Maisy Stella outshines Aubrey Plaza in My Old Ass. 

Where Plaza is here to be the cynical sage, Stella is radiant as the free-spirited goofball. Whether she’s partying with friends, hooking up with her hot girlfriend, or grousing at her family, Elliott’s charm is intoxicating — not because she’s exceptional, but because she’s not. Rather than setting her protagonist up as some noble savior of the future, Park allows Elliott to be a pretty average small-town girl desperate to move out and on to a life of her own. As such, Elliott is exuberant, horny, and reckless, colliding into awkward situations and unexpected vulnerabilities as if she’s driving a bumper car full speed down the winding road of this formative summer. Park captures the joy of carefree youth without romanticizing it, and she offers the same determined empathy for Elliott’s older half. 

With Plaza’s beleaguered eye rolls, Park swiftly dispels these fantasies that as we get older, we’ll have it all figured out. Instead, My Old Ass challenges juvenile notions that with age comes a coveted completeness, the sense that we’re not just settled but have life all figured out. The movie suggest such a hope is as absurd as our youthful ambitions to be a marine biologist and a professional dancer and President of the United States. So this story becomes less about a mission to change the past to impact the present, and more about coming to terms with our choices and who we were and are. 

While thematically, Park’s script is moving and spirited — just as The Fallout before it was — Plaza struggles to nail this balance. While she’s shown range in series like Legion and White Lotus, here she wobbles when playing anything but irritated. In scenes of bonding between the two, there’s an buzzing edge to Plaza’s tone even as she smiles at her character’s younger self. When the third act calls for softness, Plaza’s vulnerability feels performed instead of organic. Here’s where My Old Ass undercuts its sharp self-awareness and sincerity and slips into saccharine. 

My Old Ass rebuffs time-travel standards, like looking into the future to see how Elliott’s life changes. It treats the mission, and even the sci-fi premise, as little more than a launchpad for its heroine’s summer of reflection. If anything, the movie is more a teen coming-of-age comedy about that leap from high school to whatever comes next than a Quantum Leap at all.

Yet where those two subgenres collide is in a shared sentimentality over the past, and that veers into schmaltzy, for better or worse. Still, aside from this trip into treacle, My Old Ass is a spirited comedy about growing up and moving on that’s a true joy — just as Stella is a star on the rise to watch. 

My Old Ass opens in theaters Sept. 13.

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