40-year-old version review!!

 This film entitled 40-year-Old version is a very comical and enlightening film. We come in contact with this main character named Radha who is a schoolteacher and has a great relationship with her students. She is also a playwright who is steadily trying to get her work seen and become successful. She has been working on a play about Harlem and the gentrification occurring within the inner city. She tries to sell this play to a white producer, Mr. Whitman, with the help of her longtime friend Archie. He wants to help but keeps making changes to her original idea of her play that Rodha doesn’t exactly agree on. Later on in the film, Rodha randomly starts a rap career under the name RadhaMUSprime. She stumbles upon a local producer in her area named D and they begin to work together in the studio. Their relationship begins to bloom from professional to more than just friends, but lovers. Rhonda has her first showcase and ends up messing it up badly and stops rapping. 

Archie gets Rhonda back on track with her playwright dreams by informing her that Mr. Whitman would help her produce the play. But he still insists on her making changes to her film such as adding a white director and a white character as well going against her regular vision. Rhonda begins to feel embarrassed about her play with all the changes as it becomes very whitewashed. Throughout the film Rhonda goes back in form on whether writing plays is even worth it anymore or if she should go back to rapping. On the opening night of her play, Rhonda ends up denouncing the play and rapping instead a message of her own on staying true to your artistic vision. At the end of the film D and her are seen hanging out and rapping at the end happily together.  

There were many messages that can be taken from this film. The first being stay true to yourself. You don’t have to compromise your own story for others. With Rhonda, she had her own ideas and opinions and slowly became blind to see that they were changing into some play that she couldn't even recognize or feel proud of herself. She wanted to bring light to the gentrification going on black and brown cities which is a very big problem that is still going on currently in a lot of urban cities. However, when the play was shown on opening night you can see the white neighbor and the black neighbor in the film holding hands in the end, but not exactly even coming up with a resolution. 

This leads me to another problem that was displayed through Rhonda and Mr. Whitman and that is African Americans seeking approval from white individuals in power. Throughout the film, Rhonda’s ideas and visions contrasted Mr. Whitmans. Mr. Whitmans never saw her visions of having a black director as she requested and even keeping the cast all black. He even made a comment within the film after Rhonda came back with revisions of her play for him saying “oh. I love the sassy black woman character” showing how he really does see black everyday people, in my opinion. But Rhonda becomes very frustrated and has to pick a side of whether she wants to get the money and say that this white man in power will give her an idea while sacrificing the play’s integrity or just say no. This shows a bigger issue in America of a lot of the times African Americans find themselves with their hand out and the beggars verse pouring into their own thing and watching it grow for themselves. When you are not the person in power who can make it happen it causes you to be at a disadvantage, but you shouldn't have to compromise your ideas. Even with African American films and actors being upset at losing Oscars to other white films. Rhonda spoke about in her rap about being true to yourself and that is a very important message that should be carried on into the film industry as a whole. 

Lastly, this was a very funny film with great chemistry amongst the characters and I enjoyed it a lot.