Summary
40 Years Young is not the kind of film you’re going to want to tell your friends about for any reason after seeing it, so just skip it.
This review of the Netflix film 40 Years Young does not contain spoilers.
40 Years Young follows César (Erick Elias), a chef who enters into a culinary competition with his best friend and business partner Paolo (Adam Ramones). It is a contest shrouded in excitement and anticipation until César’s personal life is rocked by a series of shocking revelations, which all threaten his participation in the competition.
It’s not very often that one encounters a film so colorful yet so flat, but that is exactly the case with 40 Years Young. It is light and bright and very fluffy, but makes massive sweeping strokes that prevent it from ever having any real depth. It’s a shame as a lot of the film was very well-intentioned, but because it never really gave you a chance to hone in on these elements, it felt extremely half-baked as a result.
As the film, in general, was very fleeting and whimsical, it’s no surprise that this was something that rubbed off on the way that many of the characters and their actions were written too. There is so much of what goes on in 40 Years Young that is so incredibly nonsensical that I think even if it was a story that had anything resembling the deep end of a swimming pool, these moments would occur that are just so odd and rushed — almost as if they were still just bullet points on a script outline — that they would pull you right out of the film, completely shattering any illusion you might have that what you are watching is real. The writing was too simplistic, and brings me back to my point that the film never took the time to really explore and dissect any of the elements it glanced over.
Whilst it may have had these problems, I would say what 40 Years Young is most guilty of is being hugely and instantly forgettable. It made absolutely zero impact on me in terms of both a viewer’s perspective and a critical standpoint. I have so little to say about the film it is unreal. Regardless of whether a film is good or bad, generally speaking, they usually offer up a selection of talking points. With 40 Years Young, it’s like I haven’t even watched anything which, whilst harmless in the sense that I’m not walking around outraged by what I’ve just witnessed, is arguably worse because it made virtually no impact whatsoever. The fact that it has provoked hardly any kind of response feels so wasteful.
Overall, I really couldn’t recommend 40 Years Young at all. It’s not a bad film, it’s just one that you’ll be so indifferent to by the end of it that you may as well not bother. It feels like one of those Lifetime movies, made for TV to keep housewives and husbands company during the day, but which would contribute absolutely nothing in the way of dinnertime conversation. 40 Years Young is not the kind of film you’re going to want to tell your friends about for any reason after seeing it, so just skip it.
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