The Forty-Year-Old Version is an 2020 comedy film written, directed, and produced and starred by Radha Blank, in her directorial debut loosely based on Blank's own life.
Radha is a washed-up playwright and theatre teacher in Harlem who struggles with creating her plays while suffering Executive Meddling from J. Whitman (Reed Birney) who have their own ideas in mind with the help of her friend Archie (Peter Kim). After the death of her mother, she reawakens her childhood love for rapping when she finds herself nearing her 40th birthday. Upon finding D (Oswin Benjamin), a sound artist who introduces Radha to the rapping underbelly of Harlem, she must decide her priorities and choose between making a name for herself and being true to her heart.
This Film Contains Examples Of:
- Age-Gap Romance: Radha and D are this, as the two are forty and twenty-six years old respectively. A few of the rappers D mixes for deride him for dating an older woman, while Archie chastises Radha for dating someone that young.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: How the students play turned out. Rosa wants to do a sci-fi based story where a blue cloud rains down on everyone and takes away men's dicks. Kamal and Waldo collaborate on an idea about the evils of white women's vaginas, and how they destroy the black community. Apparently, the three joined forces offscreen and decided to blend the ideas, creating a play about a sperm alien that infiltrates the kingdom of the Queen of Vaginal Eggs.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Radha’s dead mother was a prolific artist who traveled the world, whose greatest creation was her children.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: D is a gender inverted version of this. He starts off the movie being somewhat cold and terse towards Radha, but as the two slowly open up to each other through music, he notably becomes more open and smiles more often.
- Executive Meddling: In-Universe - Radha's play originally was meant to be about a black couple who struggle against gentrification, but the meddling of the white producer J. Whitman turned the end result into a preachy, insincere mess that Radha grew to be ashamed of.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: Of Radha's four most prominent students, Elaine is melancholic (she is sullen, bitter, and hides her secret interest in theatre and Rosa), Rosa is choleric (She is a confrontational, instigatory Butch Lesbian) Kamal is sanguine (he is enthusiastic and unrelenting in his passion for his play) and Kamal is phlegmatic (he takes a secondary role to Kamal's ideas and doesn't speak up too much).
- Gay Best Friend: Archie is this for Radha. He mentions that when he and Radha were kids she pretended to be his date to the prom to avoid his father from finding out.
- To a lesser extent, Rosa is this to Waldo and Kamal, being a lesbian friend to the two straight friends.
- Gayngst: This turns out to be Elaine's issue, as it seems she has a crush on Rosa.
- Archie also mentions suffering this as a kid, when he had to pretend he liked girls to appease his parents who wanted grandchildren.
- Milestone Birthday Angst: Washed-up playwright Radha's upcoming 40th birthday is what causes her to rediscover her love for rapping.
- Out of Character Is Serious Business: When another rapper mocks D for thinking about Radha due to her age, D snaps back at him and tells him in no uncertain terms that he finds that Radha's rapping has more thought put into it and that the rapper is like many more who don't rhyme with purpose.
- The Stoic: D is a relaxed, quiet individual who prefers to make his beats in silence. Even as he warms up to Radha, he still retains his soft spoken and mellow demeanor.
- Shout-Out: The title itself is a reference to the film The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
- Stylistic Suck: The play that Radha's most enthusiastic students - Rosa, Waldo, and Kamal - make is this due to being a combination of Rosa's sci-fi based ideas and Waldo and Kamal's perverted one.
- White Guilt: None of the white people involved with the playwright industry seem overtly racist, and it seems that many have the intentions of spreading awareness of issues regarding gentrification and racism, but all of the input of Radha, a black woman, go completely overwhelmed by the preachiness and forced vernacular in order to appeal to an audience of older white people.
