"Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret": review

Buying tampons is not easy. Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret (L); Amari Alexis Price as Janie (R).

I was born in 1969 and grew up in the 70s and 80s, back when writer Judy Blume was a known quantity even to those of us—like me—who had never read her work. Her signal effort, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret was a title I'd heard a million times, but I was never moved to read the book myself. Maybe this is because the story, published in 1970, gained prominence when I was a little kid who still sometimes thought of girls as icky (not all girls, mind you: I recall having crushes as early as kindergarten), and why would a guy be caught reading a girl's book? Fast forward to now, and Blume's book has finally been made into a 2023 movie directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, who directed "The Edge of Seventeen," another coming-of-age story about a different girl who's significantly older than this film's title character Margaret—a tween at eleven/twelve. "Are You There, God?" is a gently humorous story about handling big changes; it stars Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Elle Graham, Benny Safdie, Aidan Wojtak-Hissong, Echo Kellum, and Kathy Bates.

It's 1970, and Margaret Simon (Fortson) is the daughter of an ethnically Jewish father and a Christian mother. She occasionally talks to God when she's alone, and after coming home from a happy time at summer camp, she gets the news that her father Herb (Safdie) just got a big promotion that will mean moving out of New York City to the New Jersey suburbs. Margaret is initially upset by this sudden change in life-circumstances: she's going to be separated from all of her friends, and it'll be harder for her to see her paternal grandmother Sylvia (Bates), who is also unhappy with the upcoming move. Margaret's mom Barbara (McAdams), a busy art teacher, promises Margaret that she'll now have more time to be involved in Margaret's life—participating in school committees and such the way other parents do. Margaret grudgingly accepts her fate, and the family moves.

Upon moving to New Jersey, Margaret meets her neighbor Nancy (Graham), an assertive and seemingly worldly fellow sixth-grader. Nancy initiates Margaret into a secret club with two other members: Gretchen (Katherine Kupferer) and Janie (Amari Alexis Price). Nancy seems to know a lot about things like kissing boys and getting one's period. Margaret's mom Barbara, meanwhile, keeps her promise and involves herself in school activities, volunteering for far too many organizations coordinated by manically chirpy PTA president Jan Wheeler (Kate McCluggage), who is also Nancy's mom. At one point, Margaret gets curious as to why she sees Grandma Sylvia all the time but never her mom's parents, Mary and Paul (Mia Dillon and Gary Houston). Barbara hesitantly tells her daughter that her parents are very strict Christians who disowned Barbara when she fell in love with a Jew. Margaret is incensed by the injustice of this; it becomes one of the things she privately talks to God about.

The rest of the movie is about how Margaret (and to some extent, her mom) handles changes and transitions in life. Playing spin-the-bottle and getting kissed by the cutest guy in class while liking another guy nicknamed Moose (Wojtak-Hissong), nonchalantly buying sanitary napkins in preparation for the hoped-for period, dealing with cute and nasty guys in her class, gossiping about the one girl who got hit hard by the Puberty Fairy (Isol Young), desperately practicing breast-augmentation exercises while chanting "We must! We must! We must increase our bust!"—and finally, dealing with the sudden arrival of Barbara's parents after a twelve-year-long silence... these are the things that occupy Margaret's attention. Through it all is the question of religion. Margaret's dad, though raised Jewish, is himself secular. Margaret's mom is Christian, but not of the same doctrinaire bent as her parents, and she wants Margaret to be able to choose her path for herself when she's older. Grandma Sylvia is delighted when a curious Margaret asks to go to temple with her, but Margaret also visits both a Catholic church and a Protestant one. Margaret's teacher, Mr. Benedict (Kellum), early on realizes how important the question of religion is for Margaret, and he gives religion to her as a year-long research topic about which she has to write her thoughts.

It's weird, but I found myself, at certain times during the film, wanting to shy away from the screen almost as if I were reliving my girls-are-icky phase. Maybe I had become a little too invested in Margaret's personal and spiritual journey, and there were some scenes where I didn't want to see what was going to happen next. Despite all that, my own childhood didn't have many parallels with Margaret's, so while I could relate to Margaret on a human level, the specifics about boys, feminine hygiene, and intra-familial religious confusion were outside the scope of my experience. Still, the filmmakers' efforts to evoke 1970 definitely resonated with me: the look of the suburban neighborhood, the home interiors, the clothing and hairstyles—the film's ambiance evoked memories. I found a degree of connection on that level.

As compelling as Margaret's journey was—and it was quite engaging—I thought Rachel McAdams was given one of the most profound moments in the whole film. In the role of Barbara, an art teacher who, thanks to her husband's promotion, now finds herself in suburbia with little to do but PTA work, McAdams gets a moment where her Barbara is looking out the living-room window when she spies a gorgeous, black-and-orange bird. The artist inside Barbara takes over and, hoping the subject doesn't fly away, she rummages around for art supplies so she can paint while the bird is perched on a bush outside the window. Eyeing the creature raptly, Barbara begins painting... but a sudden knock at the door startles the bird, which takes flight before Barbara can even really begin painting it. The spell is broken; Barbara answers the door only to find manically chirpy PTA president Jan Wheeler standing there, about to ask for yet another favor. I didn't realize, until that scene, just how gifted an actress Rachel McAdams was. Her rapt attention as she focused on the feathered beauty in childlike wonder was utterly hypnotic, and I could feel her character's passion for art returning as she prepared to capture the bird's image. And then, when the knock occurred, I could sense Barbara's crushing disappointment as the bird flew away. Before this movie, I admit I had thought of Rachel McAdams as little more than blandly cute and only serviceable in her roles as Irene Adler in "Sherlock Holmes," and as Christine Palmer in "Doctor Strange." I will never underestimate her again. If this one scene is evidence of her true talent, then I can only hope that McAdams lands better and better roles. She deserves them.

Everyone else in the cast is solid. Abby Ryder Fortson, as Margaret, seems to be the right age for the part, and she avoids the usual pitfalls associated with child actors. Fortson's Margaret is by turns thoughtful, meditative, kind, and freaked-out as she figures out where she stands and what she believes. Elle Graham, as worldly club ringleader Nancy (who turns out to be full of shit about many things), has an awesome resting bitch face that she employs to great effect, her piercing eyes boring holes into everyone and everything around her. Amari Alexis Price, as Janie, is cute as a button, and when Margaret finally realizes that Nancy is toxic, Janie and Margaret both defect from the secret club. Special props, too, should go to Echo Kellum as Mr. Benedict (whose religiously significant surname comes from the Latin for blessed), the quietly competent elementary-school teacher who leads his class through the perils of sixth grade. At the end of the school year, Margaret takes a moment to walk up to Mr. Benedict and tell him she thought he was a really good teacher. It's a sweet little tableau.

"Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret" is apparently only the second-ever film directed by Kelly Fremon Craig. I'd say, at this point, that she's batting a thousand. I thoroughly enjoyed "The Edge of Seventeen," and I thought "Margaret" was well paced and perceptively made. I now feel about Craig the way I feel about Denis Villeneuve: I can always trust that she'll do a good job with whatever project comes her way. I'm curious, now, as to how much the movie deviates from the original book. (Blume is alive and kicking at age 85.) I may have to buy myself an ebook copy of Margaret and see what it was that all those 70s-era girls were reading. As for the movie: go see it. On the surface, it will seem mildly entertaining, but I guarantee that parts of it will stick with you long afterwards.