Mack & Rita and the Power of Self Acceptance

The film begins with a cute little Mack, enjoying her childhood in the company of her cheerful and eccentric grandmother, little Mack is a happy and authentic little girl who is not ashamed to dress differently and go around. Time passes, and we reach the present day, when we see a Mack who stops wearing an accessory because her friends do not consider it good enough. This scene is just one example of how insecure and anxious she is when dealing with other people.

Mack goes on a trip with some friends and right away we see that these friends have nothing in common with her, we can see that that little Mack is still there somewhere yearning to show herself, but being suffocated and oppressed by pressure for acceptance from others.

In other words, Mack has nothing to do with the vibe of her friends. You can see in the bachelorette party of one of her friends that she feels improper all the time, but she struggles to play the part. Who doesn't know someone just like her, who can't stand parties, mess, noise, clingy and uncomfortable clothes, people who feel totally out of their realities, but who are there, pretending to be happy to fit in with the world's standards.

In an unexpected move, she leaves the friends she wants so much to impress to go to a tent in the middle of nowhere, where she meets a strange, not to say suspicious figure and gets into a machine. She starts talking about how hard it is to have to dress and act all the time, to pass an image to the world when what she really wanted was to be eating pancakes and being herself. So, she defines herself as a seventy-year-old woman living in a thirty-year-old body.

She then comes out of the machine with the body of a seventy-year-old woman and the guy is gone, just like some kind of Big, that movie from the eighties but in a modern version, and this part I didn't really buy because she could have just passed out or been asleep and dreaming about what her life would be like if she were seventy, but the whole machine thing is" kind of" unrealistic to me, but okay, for the comedy it was worth it because the scene is hilarious.

When she finds her friend and tells her everything, the scene is also hilarious. We see her facing the reality of being 70 and the fear of losing her friends and job because she is old. In other words, being old also has its drawbacks. The first important lesson here is that true friends love her, no matter what your age or appearance, they will always be there for her.

After she returns to Los Angeles and tries to get back into her routine, we get more hilarious scenes, like her watching her neighbor with her best friend's mother, like two old gossips. Then she takes some crazy tea to try to get back to her 30s, and ends up having some crazy conversations with her dog.

And when Mack accepts that she will have to be aunt Rita for a while, she takes her best friend to the place where she used to go with her grandmother when she was a kid, and there she is surprised because her friend also loves the place.

Being herself in her 70s appearance, Mack is loved by people, she is making money, empowering other ladies and, amazingly, she and Jack kiss, and we find that he has a crush on her.

When she notices that the regression guy is around, she gets worried because she has never been so successful and popular as she is now. Carla then tells him that she is only being popular now because she is showing the world who she really is, and this is, in my opinion, the movie's great idea.

But as everything in life has its negative side, Rita starts to see the negative side of fame, when due to a brand event, she misses Carla's rehearsal dinner, and still almost literally catches fire, she sees that she is losing herself, with all this confusion, and her friend makes this clear when she says that she no longer recognizes her, and that the last thing that really matters in the friendship of the two is appearance, what really matters is what one does for the other.

Completely devastated, Rita-Mack reflects and feels totally frustrated with who she has become, nothing in life is as she imagined it would be when she was a lady, or when she had fame, so Jack our guy teaches Rita a big lesson, telling her that he likes her because she feels comfortable being herself because he's like that too, and he feels good because he doesn't care how he looks, or what people think of him because what's important is that he feels good about himself, and I think that's all our sweetheart needed to hear, but more than that is what she needs to understand.

The next morning, she is visited by her group of senior friends, and they explain to Mack that wanting to be old when you can be young is crazy, she then explains that her grandmother always told her that when you get old "you get the best seats at the table," the ladies then explain to her that you don't get the best seats at the table because you are old, but in old age you have the best seats at the table because usually at that age, people know best what they want for their lives, they know how to recognize the opportunities and chances to be happy, they know how to just live and be themselves free of pressure because they really don't have that much time to waste anymore.

This is what they say, but what I see out there, unfortunately, are women who feel ashamed of getting older and feel diminished because they are getting older. Many women, unfortunately, waste precious time that they could be happy clinging to aesthetic standards and trying to postpone the unstoppable because time passes, and it comes for everyone. The message that the film tries to convey is this, although growing old is a gift because only those who do not die grow old. What matters, in fact, is that you know who you are, what you want, and love yourself above all because life is too short to live to please other people's expectations.

Mack then discovers that she didn't want to be old, all she wanted was to be herself, but she thought she could only do that by being 70, but with the advice of the wise ladies, she understands that you can't skip phases and that life has no replay, and you have to live each moment by, what it really is a gift, and it is what Jack told her, she doesn't need to be old she just needs to accept who she is and feel good about it, regardless of what others will think.

And the movie ends with Mack turning thirty again, and now she has learned to wear the clothes she wants, getting the guy she wants and being herself, and discovering that yes, the people who really matter still love her and will always love her, without her having to pretend to be who she is not.

The key word in this movie is acceptance, Mack had the chance to be old and be young again, so she can see things from the right perspective, but we certainly won't have this chance, so let this movie inspire us to learn to accept ourselves as we are, and show ourselves to the world in a free and authentic way because this is what brings happiness, living under the weight of what other people want or not, is useless, life goes by too fast, and only by recognizing who we are, and enjoying each phase of our lives to the fullest, and that it is worth living, all vanity, desperate search for physical and behavioral standards, are only a waste of time, which steals our joy and always takes away the precious gift we have of being ourselves unique and wonderful beings.

This movie has certainly earned a place in my heart, and whenever I can, I will re-watch it because it is a pill of wisdom for a world as obsessed with appearance as the one we are living in. Be yourself and enjoy it, and don't worry because those who are worthwhile will enjoy it too.