Movie Review
Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
Since its publication more than a half a century ago, Judy Blume’s groundbreaking young adult novel Are You There, God? It’s Me Margaret has been passed down like a sacred text between generations of readers. Shockingly, until now it’s never been adapted onto the screen.
And yet somehow it doesn’t feel like the movie from writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig came too late. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that an earlier take on the book would have been made with this much honesty and care.
You can picture a bad version of a Margaret movie, squeamish about all the menstruation talk or settling for crude laughs over empathy. Instead, this film, executive produced by James L. Brooks, leans into all the awkwardness of nascent womanhood and augments it with beautiful work from a cast that includes Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates, and brilliant newcomer Abby Ryder Fortson, who plays Margaret with a skilled precision beyond her years.
Craig makes the smart decision to keep the action in the 1970s, when the book was originally written, thereby avoiding the smartphone perils of current girlhood. (If you want a more modern take on that, watch Bo Burnham’s harrowing Eighth Grade.) Margaret’s tale kicks off when her parents, Barbara and Herb (McAdams and Benny Safdie) inform her they’re moving from bohemian New York City to the New Jersey suburbs — it’s nothing short of a social death sentence for a city kid who relies on the counsel of her fabulous cosmopolitan grandmother, Sylvia (Bates).
In her new town, Margaret is immediately besieged by her queen-bee next door neighbor, Nancy Wheeler (a perfectly pitched Elle Graham), who inducts her into the local clique, where the rules for membership include wearing a bra even if you’re flat-chested and revealing the names of your crushes.
Margaret never devolves into cringe comedy. Instead, the tone is spry and wistful even as it remains painfully relatable. There are laughs to be found in the famous “we must increase our bust” moment, when the girls do a futile exercise with to hurry up puberty, but the movie isn’t afraid to linger on betrayal or bullying.
That’s where Margaret turns to God. The monologues that give the book and film its title could easily slide into hokum, but they’re deftly executed to probe Margaret’s searching nature. With a Jewish dad and a Christian mom, she’s been left to choose her own religion. The book’s frank talk about periods gets most of the attention, but the religious questioning was Ms. Blume’s most radical insight, and it’s just as devastating to watch the adults try to influence Margaret’s faith as it is to watch her friends goad her about boys.
The grown-ups, however, are also the source of many of the pleasures of Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. Ms. Bates, as always, is a hoot as Sylvia, and Safdie, best known as the co-director of the decidedly not-kid-friendly Uncut Gems, is a surprise delight as Margaret’s goofy father. Still, it’s Ms. McAdams who matches Ms. Fortson as the second chamber of the movie’s heart.
Craig’s screenplay gives Barbara an arc that mirrors her daughter’s. An artist trying to be a stay-at-home mom, Barbara is just as ill-at-ease in her environment as Margaret is in hers. Ms. McAdams’s Barbara may speak to many of Ms. Blume’s readers, who probably last picked up Margaret decades ago; they’re still figuring things out, too.
I do wonder if today’s pre-teen audience will find as much to love in the movie as I did. Margaret is not a mere nostalgia play, but it does feel like it was made, in part, for those of us who’ve already gone through what its protagonist is just beginning to grapple with. I hope the current crop of youngsters like it, but I’m sure they’ll come to love it as they grow older. The movie, just like the book, is built to stand the test of time. — Bloomberg