Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ on Starz, a Delightfully Funny Adaptation of a Judy Blume Classic

From the It’s About Damn Time Dept. comes Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (now streaming on Starz, in addition to VOD services like Amazon Prime Video), the movie adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved 1970 novel about religion, menstruation and other sundry pre-teen female travails and anxieties. Blume over the years reportedly rejected many offers to adapt her beloved bestseller, but at long last granted the film rights to producer James L. Brooks (whose film and TV credits range from Terms of Endearment to The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Simpsons) and writer/director/producer Kelly Fremon Craig (whose directorial debut, The Edge of Seventeen, is an absolute triumph of a high-school dramedy), who cast Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates in the key roles. This obviously isn’t just any old creative team, nor is the result just any old coming-of-age movie – it’s one that’s been pleasing audiences and critics almost universally, because they absolutely did right by Blume and Margaret.

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s 1970 (insert “period movie” joke here). Margaret (Fortson) comes home from that type of era-specific summer camp where kids farted around outside and slept in cabin bunks for weeks at a time. Weeks! It was long enough for a lot to happen while Margaret was away: Her dad Herb (Benny Safdie) got a new job, her mom Barbara (McAdams) quit her art-teaching gig and they bought a house over the river in New Jersey. Goodbye, New York City. Goodbye, Grandma (Bates). Goodbye, old school. Goodbye, all her friends. Margaret ain’t happy about any of this, but what are you gonna do? She’s 11. She has no choice but to roll with it. And this is when Margaret starts talking to God about her troubles. Or maybe she’s talking to nobody; it’s hard to tell which. Either way, welcome to hardship and the unsolvable mysteries of life, Margaret. Get used to it!

Anyway, now it’s time to say hello: Hello, suburbs. Hello, Grandma-via-telephone. Hello, new school. Hello, new friends. They’re fresh in the new house and Barbara’s wrestling with boxes and Herb’s fighting with the lawnmower when there’s a knock at the door. It’s Nancy Wheeler (Elle Graham), Margaret’s neighbor and classmate. She invites Margaret over to play in the sprinkler, which functions as a symbolic baptismal for indoctrination into suburban life. Speaking of which, Margaret has no religious affiliation. Her dad is Jewish and her mother is from a Christian family. When Margaret asks why she’s never met her maternal grandparents, Barbara cries and tells her that her parents disowned her for marrying a Jewish man. And for that reason, Barbara wants Margaret to figure out her own beliefs when she’s old enough to do so. 

Margaret’s acclimation within the new setting isn’t easy, but it could be worse, I guess. Nancy is a blessing and a curse – she’s kind of a piece of work, her family’s relative affluence, and her mother’s stature as president of the PTA, fuels her know-it-all ego. She likes to talk about boys and kissing and stuff, and shows off how she practices kissing one of the big knobs on her four-poster bed. She invites Magaret to join her after-school club with Janie (Amari Price) and Gretchen (Katherine Kupferer), and they obsess over their pending womanhood by wishing for bountiful breast development by chanting, “I must! I must! I must increase my bust!” Nancy dictates the dumb membership rules – no socks, must wear a bra – and they openly lust after the cool boy in school, although Margaret prefers to secretly gawk at Moose (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong), the neighbor kid with the wispy mustache who her dad hired to mow the lawn. Ooh la la.

Meanwhile, life happens: Barbara joins the PTA and volunteers for too many committees; come Christmastime, she impulsively sends a card to her parents. Grandma has Margaret over for the weekend, and they see Pirates of Penzance. The weird kid in class, Norman (Simms May), invites everyone to his birthday party. The very early bloomer in class, Laura (Isol Young), is the subject of nasty rumors. The girls watch a sex-ed film in school. Margaret goes to temple with Grandma and to a Black gospel church with Janie and wanders into a Catholic confessional. The after-school club ogles a diagram of male genitalia in an anatomy text – and they obsess over their pending menstruation, like it’s a race to see who gets her period first. It’s one awkward thing after another. Like I said: Life happens!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Margaret is the rare pre-teen comedy that doesn’t feel cloying, calculated or overwritten – see also, Ramona and Beezus. It’d make a perfect double-feature with The Edge of Seventeen. And for more on Judy Blume, consult your school library (if it hasn’t banned her books, ugh) – or watch the recent biodoc, Judy Blume Forever (now on Amazon Prime Video). 

Performance Worth Watching: McAdams and Fortson make for a terrific mother-daughter combo, carrying the film’s emotional weight not like a burden, but as an opportunity for gentle enlightenment. It surely ranks among McAdams’ best work, and establishes Fortson as a worthy lead. 

Memorable Dialogue: One of Margaret’s “prayers”: “Also, I’m getting a bra today. I’d like something to put in it, please.”

Sex and Skin: Just some profoundly innocent frank talk about boys’ junk.

Our Take: The key to Margaret is tone – as she did with Seventeen, Craig gets the warm, temperate mixture of comedy and drama, and the approach to the unruly topics of sex and religion, just right. She’s very much in tune with Blume’s work, which stands within the big, complicated world with eyes wide and arms open. The movie reflects the author’s inspired plea for honesty, understanding, curiosity and love, the element that renders the book a classic.

This endlessly charming, funny and subtly profound film is a series of episodes within a year in the life of a young girl who’s exceptionally unexceptional – she’s not perfect, she’s not the best or worst at anything, she’s subject to strengths and failures of character like all of us. We’ve all been there, puzzling over people and our bodies and the norms of society, just trying to figure things out. No problem she confronts is easily solved; she has to manage them, work through them, endure them. There are no heroes or villains here, just humans, sometimes divided into cliques that someone as exquisitely average as Margaret might bring together. Maybe she’ll succeed, maybe she won’t. But either way, she’ll be just fine, because she’s a good kid, and therefore a lovely protagonist.

Wisely, Craig minimizes the referential nostalgia of films set in the relatively recent past, a trap that other films too frequently indulge for too-easy laughs (the sight of McAdams glopping Campbell’s cream of mushroom on top of a pot roast is all the evocative imagery and sound we need). Rather, she hones in on the details of character, holding precious the emotion of a scene, be it delight or sadness, giddiness or disappointment, or any redolent combinations thereof. She directs with heart forward and head close behind, and that’s the quiet meta-example she sets for our protagonist, and any young minds who may be watching. If there’s a better way to live, I’ve yet to be convinced otherwise.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is a sweet, delightful comedy with endless appeal and a captivatingly wholesome spirit.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.