Director: Kelly Fremon Craig
Writers: Kelly Fremon Craig and Judy Blume
Stars: Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates
Synopsis: When her family moves from the city to the suburbs, 11-year-old Margaret navigates new friends, feelings, and the beginning of adolescence.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is one of only a handful of films that tell the story from the female perspective of coming of age with a perfect amount of tender love and care. Based on the classic middle-grade novel by Judy Blume of the same name, her book was as influential as a glimpse of the future of what it was like to be growing up in America during a period of significant social change. The story was as much about larger issues, such as losing faith and questioning it, and how that contributed to anxieties, especially for early female adolescents.
Writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig’s (The Edge of Seventeen) excellent adaptation of Ms. Blume’s book follows eleven-year-old Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) as she moves from the land of big skyscrapers, apples, and attitudes to a picturesque New Jersey suburb. Her teacher, Mr. Benedict (Echo Kellum), encourages her to explore her lack of faith due to her interfaith, yet agnostic upbringing for a class assignment.
Margaret’s mother, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), is Catholic, and her father, Herb ( Benny Safdie), is Jewish. Barbara’s parents cut her off because she married Herb, leaving Herb’s mother, Sylvia (Kathy Bates), to spoil Margaret and hope she embraces her Jewish heritage. When not spending time with her grandmother, Margaret has made a best friend in Nancy (Nancy Wheeler), who joins their secret club where they make up cardinal rules and discuss everything from boys to their anticipated “red panda” moment (thank you Turning Red for the metaphor).
What sets Ms. Craig’s film apart from other Judy Blume adaptations is that the kids in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret actually acttheir age. There are cute scenes of the girls trying to force their way into puberty, like the Kool-Aid man through a brick wall, with the chant “I must, I must, I must increase my bust,” and the overwhelming consternation of early adolescence. Craig captures the spirit of Blume’s book in an intimate and refreshingly honest manner that is wholly entertaining and, at times, moving.
For example, watch the way the director captures two moments with the young female characters. Fortson’s Margaret, cute and uplifting, and for Wheeler’s Nancy, encompassing all the anxiety, fear, shame, and embarrassment a pre-adolescent girl can feel, is done perfectly and beautifully. Most importantly, the mother’s reaction tells how meaningful the mother/daughter relationship can be during those crucial times in a young girl’s development into womanhood.
Some may argue Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is out of touch with society regarding religion. The book was written during a different time and place. (It should be noted that 84% of the global population identifies with a religious affiliation, and only 29% of people in the United States identify as agnostic.) Frankly, the book is timeless as it has become increasingly relevant regarding the passage of time with those all-consuming sobering, and mortifying moments of growing up.
And that’s where Ms. Fortson’s wonderful and even, say, brave performance comes into play. This is a movie about relationships – the ones with her parents, which are touching; the one with her grandmother, which is heartwarming; the ones with her friends, which are endearing; and finally, the one she has with God, which is nonexistent and equivalent to an existential crisis when it comes to Margaret’s pride conflicting with a tremendous amount of self-doubt that she must overcome.
Her performance is a heartfelt gem, just like this movie.
