Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Kelly Fremon Craig’s film adaptation of Judy Blume’s “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” takes place in a New Hampshire summer camp and 1970s New York City before settling into a Norman Rockwell suburban setting.

“Please don’t let New Jersey be too horrible,” whispers Margaret Simon (a fantastic Abby Ryder Fortson) to God as her family packs up their car and moves to the suburbs of Trenton, skyscrapers giving way to supermarket parking lots, yard sales, and kids running through sprinklers.

No sooner have they pulled into their house than Margaret is invited by her new neighbor Nancy (Elle Graham, full of beans) to run through those same dreamy sprinklers with her, initiating her into this new suburban rhythm of life. Nancy’s energy overwhelms and charms Margaret both; she is over the moon when Nancy asks her to join her secret club, along with fellow sixth graders Gretchen (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) and Janie (Amari Price). Through these friendships, she will learn hard lessons about peer pressure, the pain of lies, and the power of being true to herself.

When the girls’ reveries are disrupted by the antics of Nancy’s brother Evan (Landon S. Baxter) and his pal Moose (Aidan Wojtak-Hissong), the camera cuts to Margaret’s POV as she takes in Moose’s armpit hair a moment that made me think of Karen Maine’s equally exquisite coming of age film “Yes, God, Yes.” This is Margaret’s first crush blush; as she holds her breath we know that for better or worse Moose will be lodged in there somewhere for the rest of the movie though it might take her that long just to say something about it aloud.

All the girls in the club are starting to obsess over boys. Mainly Philip Leroy (Zackary Brooks), a pretty boy who’s already proving to be quite the jerk, though the girls don’t have enough experience yet to recognize it. At school and in their club meetings, they gossip about other students, especially Laura Danker (Isol Young), whose body is already further along into puberty than anybody else’s.

They try to rush the process of growing up by getting training bras and reciting “I must, I must, I must increase my bust” while they wait to see who gets their period first. Craig shoots these scenes with such gentle empathy for the girls, never making them look foolish even when they’re acting their most foolish but also never shying away from how casually cruel (under the guise of honesty) they can be.

But Margaret’s journey is not just physical. After writing that she doesn’t like “religious holidays” in a get to know me paper, her teacher assigns her a year-long project on religion. But Margaret has no religion; she wants to choose her own when she grows up like her parents Barbara (Rachel McAdams, radiant) and Herb (Benny Safdie), want her too much to the chagrin of Herb’s mother Sylvia (Kathy Bates).

This is where the movie most deviates from its source material. In Blume’s book Margaret tells her friends why she has no religion; in Fremon Craig’s film, she asks her mom what religion they are because she honestly doesn’t know.

In an absolutely gutting sequence, Barbara tells her daughter that her parents couldn’t have a Jewish son-in-law because they were “devout Christians,” and so she would no longer be their daughter if she married Herb.

By giving this speech to Barbara, Craig teases out on a much larger scale the theme of how the choices of one’s parents can affect their children long into adulthood. While it is present somewhat in Blume’s writing, the book is so focused on Margaret’s experience that her parents are almost blank canvases; but through Craig’s adaptation, Barbara becomes just as fleshed out as Margaret herself.

In this move to the suburbs, details from the book like how Barbara likes to paint are writ large with her now leaving behind a career as an art teacher. So does Barbara adjust to life at a new school. Less fulfilled with the burden of buying a new living room set for their house or joining a million PTA committees than she thought she would be, Barbara surrounds herself with her paintings and yearns to find some semblance of artistic inspiration in this new life.

With McAdams- one of her generation’s most emotionally charged performers- in the role, Barbara becomes more than just a stereotypical overworked mom. Her warmth radiates throughout the film as she must be both a safe harbor for Margaret’s ever changing moods and also a ship on her own rocky journey toward self-actualization; McAdams is so mesmerizing in this role that she almost overpowers Margaret’s story and thus shines a light on what I believe to be the film’s one fault.

Craig’s movie is not just coming of age but also sacrifice, trauma, safety while building your own family as womanhood which includes women like barbara who create wider parts within themselves than do men: i.e., workaholic monomania versus multi-tasking paradise lost type stuff etcetera.

However, due to uneven scripting or editing, her internal journey is not as seamlessly integrated with Margaret’s as it could be; although Barbara keeps much of her internal struggles to herself, I still wish we knew how Margaret felt about Barbara’s attempted reconciliation with her parents or how Barbara felt about Margaret’s coming puberty.

Margaret is iconic channeled by Fortson who does justice by displaying conflicting moods with ease but ultimately belongs more so to McAdams whose incandescent performance should be remembered for being one of the best at end of the year lists start rolling in and perhaps even ever.

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