The Forty-Year-Old Version
netflixIn Hollywood, midlife crises are usually the domain of the white, well-off, suburban dad. In other words: a Judd Apatow protagonist. Think Steve Carell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin or Paul Rudd in This Is 40. Apatow has even cornered a market niche with his take on the quarter life crisis in The King of Staten Island. It’s long-past time for a woman of color to get her due and, thankfully, Radha Blank does just that with her directorial debut The Forty-Year-Old Version. The movie, which was bankrolled by the deep pockets of Netflix, showcases a perspective not often put in the spotlight by Hollywood.
Blank, who wrote and acted in the film as well, plays a fictionalized version of herself: an almost-40 Black woman struggling to pursue her playwriting career while simultaneously teaching a group of genitalia-obsessed teenagers to write their own plays. Radha is brought to vibrant life by Blank, who imbues the role with a keen sense of humor and a level of distance from the on-goings of the film. She occasionally breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera, and it almost always seems as if she’s half-joking. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t sincere. Radha is one of the more earnest characters to grace the screen this year, and the audience will immediately sympathize with her struggles.
However, don’t make the mistake of conflating her artistic struggles with poverty. Blank is quite clear on this point: her movie is not going to be the typical “poverty porn” that comes with the territory of Black media. In a lightly satiric touch, the condescending theater producer J. Whitman (Reed Birney) won’t finance Radha’s play without rewrites to make it more “dark” and even goes so far as to offer her a writing credit on the “Harriet Tubman musical.” It’s a scalding indictment of the ignorant and colorblind white producers – in both theater and the movies – who dilute Black characters down to slaves, maids or poor people in general.
Unfortunately, the rest of Blank’s movie doesn’t have quite the same bite, and while everything is serviceable, there are more than a few clichés to boot. The contrived conflict between Radha’s playwriting career and her blossoming rapping one results in many a convenient inconvenience. She doesn’t answer her phone in a meeting when it serves the plot, and she inexplicably answers during a rehearsal when it does. The parts about Radha sacrificing her vision to get the art made ring hollow because they’ve been seen a million times before. And the subplot involving the kids Radha teaches is so cliché it’s almost forgotten during the film’s second half.
These structural issues prevent The Forty-Year-Old Version from being truly great but do nothing to stop it from being immensely enjoyable. Keeping in line with the Apatow comparisons, The Forty-Year-Old Version is up there with King of Staten Island as one of the year’s funniest comedies. While Blank still has some work to do on the narrative itself, there are many a memorable line peppered throughout, and the quips come fast and smart. Peter Kim, who plays Radha’s agent and long-time friend, delivers with his sizable chunk of the best one-liners, and the aloofness of the white crew working on Radha’s production can be hilarious. The two-hour runtime practically flies by with so many laughs a minute. Another high point is the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography by Eric Branco. Shot on 35 millimeter film, the often stark compositions are beautiful to behold, and the handheld nature of the camera movement makes the film feel down-to-earth in a charming sort of way. At its best, The Forty-Year-Old Version is a self-aware and self-reflexive commentary on performative wokeness and the weaknesses of the current colorblind system of production on the screen and stage. While the film’s fair share of contrivances and trite conflicts threaten to derail Blank’s vision, a strong ensemble and sharp humor keep The Forty-Year-Old Version firmly on the right track.
