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

content-ratingsWhy 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.


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.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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