Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret Review: An Affectionate Adaptation of Judy Blume’s Classic

In the more than 50 years that it took for Judy Blume’s beloved young adult novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to reach movie screens, the world has become a much different place. And yet, books are still being banned from schools and libraries, and the level of openness and honesty that society allows itself when it comes to the changes that girls face on the precipice of puberty is still very much on shaky ground.

Blume’s 1970 classic, which has been challenged by censorious cultural gatekeepers due to its impenitent depictions of first menstruation and mutable religious identity, remains, to its devoted audience, less a touchstone than a veritable lifeline. And if the book itself is no longer as prime a target for censorship today, Blume herself recently mused that, if anything, today’s challenges to books and the conflicts that surround them are more insidious because they’re now coming from within governmental institutions. (As a Florida resident, she should know.)

It’s both within and without that context that writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s film adaptation arrives, as a salve, a unicorn, and a heartening, minor-key triumph. Rather than try to update the book for the modern era, the film smartly keeps its story within the novel’s original era, as Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) navigates the complexities of tween existence as her life is uprooted when her father’s promotion moves her family from a teeming New York City apartment to a sleepy suburban New Jersey split level.

The relocation takes Margaret far away from her beloved, Broadway-baby grandmother, Sylvia (a very game Kathy Bates), which in turn triggers a surge in curiosity as to why she’s never once met her maternal grandparents. Margaret’s mother, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), divulges that she and her Christian parents had a falling out over her marriage to a Jewish man. It’s for that reason that they committed to raising Margaret outside of any particular religious identity, intending to let her decide for herself when the time comes.

The same unforced mindset that Margaret’s parents espouse is embodied in Fremon Craig’s approach to the film’s characters. She allows Are You There God? room to wander outside of Margaret’s own subjectivity at key moments, enriching in particular the tribulations of Barbara, who struggles to settle into her new identity as an unworking housewife doing quiet penance on various PTA committees, as well as her own fateful decision to finally send her parents a Christmas card. The predictably disastrous outcome of the latter move, and the heartbreaking speed with which Barbara takes the blame for others’ intolerant views, cements McAdams’s performance as a quiet astonishment, one that proves that she’s not only one of the best actresses of her generation, but also one of the least ostentatious.

Blume and Fremon Craig share a default spirit of generosity. Margaret’s first friend in Jersey, her neighbor Nancy (Elle Graham), could in less careful hands come off as a one-dimensional, bossy brat. Instead, her pushiness is presented as an extension of her need to keep up appearances, and her laser focus on making the members of their best-friends quartet adhere to rigid rules—from the girls needing to keep a boy journal to having to wear a bra at all times—feels like the consequence of her own parents’ country-club mentality. When, late in the school year, Nancy is exposed as having lied about getting her first period, it’s revealed in a moment of such delicacy that it’s impossible not to feel empathy for all parties involved, including Nancy’s own halfway-to-Stepford mother (Kate MacCluggage).

You never get the sense that what the film is doing is earth-shattering. And yet, by the time it reaches full circle on its summer-to-summer timetable and Margaret finally gets her long-wished-for signal of just how far she’s come in her physical and personal growth, the sense that they genuinely don’t make mass entertainments like this anymore is palpable, and it’s impossible not to feel grateful for its very existence. This is a movie that, like its source, will amicably report for duty in many young persons’ lives for generations to come.