The Forty-Year-Old Version

This has got a lovely pace, beautifully shot, and keeps on keeping things real - with the delight and courage and struggle and beauty that real life can have. Radha is charming and funny as well as raw, and her relationships - from those on the street corner, old friends and very new ones, the teenagers she works with each week - too.

Wow, am I really leaving the first review? This movie made me laugh (a lot, lots of giggles) and made me think. On a universal level, there are so few movies that address the humor and pains of being 40 (The 30 yos get all the fun) so, anyone who is about to turn 40 will find something to relate to in this movie. But on another level, it made me think about what being a black female playwright and poet is like (I'm a white dude), and did so in a way that made me laugh and feel uncomfortable at the same time. That's a rare quality and I feel like a better human being today for it. So, in short - LOVED IT.

This movie is absolutely fantastic. It may be 2 hours long but it felt like 1 hour 20. Charming and amusing from start to finish. Really good comedic acting, great direction, full of brilliant one liners and if this was the 90s I'd be buying that OST on cd. 100% a must watch.

I very much enjoyed this movie. The female lead, who also wrote and directed the movie, tells a funny if sad story of a middle-aged black playwright who cannot get her works produced until she finally agrees to sell out and rewrite one of her works to make it conform to the East Side white liberal view of what Harlem must be like. (Imagine the world of New York East Side pseudo-intellectuals that Woody Allen has been lampooning for decades.) Her compromised play succeeds - with an audience of white East Side intellectuals - and then she has to decide where to go from there.

There are wonderful scenes in this movie. There were others that didn't hold me.

I wish more time could have been devoted to how the original play was changed/compromised during rehearsals.

Still, I definitely recommend this movie.

The plot is not uncommon, an artistic talent in search of true self and caught between commercialism and sincere expression. and yet, the acting, script, direction, editing - it drew me in. i didn't think it would but i quickly found my self caring about her and enjoying her journey, great job on character development for herself and supporting. casting also good. one thing i look for with new/small film, flat spots, where a director or editor lets things lull, creating an unevenness - none here, there is consistency and a rhythm from beginning to end. i can't wait to see what she does next.