The Forty-Year-Old Version | 2020 | R | – 5.2.10

Why is “The Forty-Year-Old Version” rated R? The MPAA rating has been assigned for “pervasive language, sexual content, some drug use and brief nudity.” The Kids-In-Mind.com evaluation includes a sex scene and the sounds of two people having sex, flirting and references to sexuality, a fight in a classroom ending with no injuries, several arguments, a rhyming competition, dealing with grief and loss of a parent, and at least 87 F-words and other strong language. Read our parents’ guide below for details on sexual content, violence & strong language.

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After her mother dies, a woman (Radha Blank) that’s almost 40 years old, feels that she has failed at what she has always thought she could be and tries a new path as a Hip-Hop artist, with surprising results. Also with Imani Lewis, Reed Birney, Welker White, Haskiri Velazquez, Peter Kim, Peggy J. Scott, Jacob Ming-Trent, Antonio Ortiz, Michael Izquierdo, T.J. Atoms and Oswin Benjamin. Directed by Radha Blank. [Running Time: 2:09]

The Forty-Year-Old Version SEX/NUDITY 5

 – A man and woman kiss in bed with the man on top of the woman heavily shadowed; the man kisses down her chest and off-screen as she moans and oral sex is implied. We hear sexual moaning through a wall and a woman presses her ear against the wall to listen. A man kisses a woman on the forehead.
► A young man flirts with his teacher and she pushes him away saying that it would be inappropriate. A woman admires a man’s clothed buttocks on a train. A teen girl looks at another teen girl with interest. A teen boy flirts with a teen girl. A man says that his partner left him because he had to cancel a trip they had planned. A man talking on the phone while walking on a sidewalk says something that another man might have misconstrued as a sexual invitation; the first man turns and says, “Oh, no I’d never [F-word deleted] you.” A man talks about allowing another man to grope him in order to make a deal. A man tells another man, “Begging doesn’t suit your beautiful cheekbones,” as he touches his face. Teenagers in a theater class talks about writing a play and each storyline references genitals; their teacher asks if they can come up with something that does not involve genitalia. A woman says, “I had many lovers.” A teen girl makes several suggestive remarks about her female teacher. A woman describes a teen as a “gender non-conformist.”
► We see a photograph of a scrotum. A woman wears low-cut tops that reveal cleavage in several scenes. A woman wears a robe open in the front to reveal his bare chest and abdomen. A teen lifts her shirt to reveal breasts to a bouncer at a club and he lets her in under threat of turning him in for looking at her (we do not see any nudity).

The Forty-Year-Old Version VIOLENCE/GORE 2

 – Two teens fight in a classroom, shoving, yelling and pulling each other’s hair until they are taken away by school officials. A woman grabs a man around the throat at a gathering (the scene ends before we see any injuries). A woman runs for a bus and has to plead with the driver to open the door; she touches his shoulder while thanking him when she gets on board and he looks upset.
► A woman performs a rhyme in a theater and insults members of the audience after a play. A man yells at a woman on a sidewalk and tells her to be quiet. A woman is frustrated when her lines in a play are written in a racist vernacular. A woman talks about “Black poverty porn” in several scenes. Several women compete with rhymes in front of a crowd. A woman cries and calls for her mother when she feels lost and sad.
► A bus driver tells riders that one woman doesn’t want him to help handicapped people board the bus and she becomes embarrassed. A teen girl mocks a woman for not having any of her work produced recently. A man and woman make rhymes about their dead mothers and what they would like to do if they had just one more moment with them. A man tells a woman, “You should talk to someone,” because she is sad and upset. A brother and sister talk about missing their mother, who died recently. A woman tells a man, “Your mother would be proud,” and he says that his mother is dead. A woman asks if a man smells, “The burning carcass of friendship” when they disagree. A woman talks about being a member of the “Dead mom club.” A woman talks about struggling when she was little and living on “government cheese” and “squatting.” A woman talks about not being able to control your bowels after a certain age. A man talks about being nauseous but that he would have to eat to be able to throw up.
► A man living on a sidewalk drops his pants and squats (implying that he defecates, but we do not see any excrement). A woman takes a man living on a sidewalk a sandwich and he asks if she is poisoning him.

The Forty-Year-Old Version LANGUAGE 10

 – About 87 F-words and its derivatives, 13 sexual references, 106 scatological terms, 58 anatomical terms (2 in Spanish), 37 mild obscenities, 21 derogatory terms for African-Americans, 1 derogatory term for lesbians, name-calling (crazy, invalids, trash, decepticants, cow, inauthentic, lady, fearless, fat girl, fool, ugly, bad apple, hon, pasty white [anatomical term deleted], cheap date, dumb, new Harlemites, dummy, racist, mess, stupid, stupider, sweetheart, Homeless, Harry, corny, sea of old white women, preposterous, feminist, ho, Robopop, underdogs, washed-up, ridiculousness, uni-bomber), exclamations (oh yeah, great, suck it up, please, wow, nah, shut-up, oooh, oh sweet, bet, really, yeah, oh brother, dope, fine, stop, seriously, gosh, got it, ouch, yo, listen, back off), 1 religious profanity (GD), 19 religious exclamations (e.g. My God, Oh My God, Oh God, Oh My Jesus, Oh Sweet Jesus, Jesus). | profanity glossary |

The Forty-Year-Old Version SUBSTANCE USE

 – A woman implies that she has had experience using drugs and says that she can identify three grades of crack, a woman goes to an apartment and when the door opens smoke comes out into the hallway, people in an apartment are shown smoking marijuana cigarettes in a few scenes, a woman smokes from a marijuana cigarette before performing to calm her, a woman talks about needing to show up to a place with a “bag of weed” for payment (we see her twice holding plastic bags with what is implied to be marijuana). A woman drinks at a theater bar.

The Forty-Year-Old Version DISCUSSION TOPICS

 – Success, death of a parent, failure, theater production, creativity, gentrification, assumptions, storytelling, perspective, vernacular, selling out, Hip-Hop, desperation, truth, advice, friendship.

The Forty-Year-Old Version MESSAGE

 – Find your own voice.