Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret review – Judy Blume adaptation is a winner – The Guardian

For all our snap-bracelet readiness to embrace lady energy and its concomitant hashtags (#yougotthis!), depictions of preadolescents which can be worthy of their topics are skinny on the bottom. Maybe as a result of most tweens will simply “watch up” anyway, massive leisure has slouched into a cushty stance of pumping out cutesy youngsters’ content material and edgy fare about highschool, with out bothering to provide a lot thought to the fantastically messy center floor.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s entry to the woefully underserved class of interval dramas (make of that what you’ll), is destined to turn into a basic. Based mostly on – however not fully wedded to – Judy Blume’s seminal 1970 novel of the identical identify, the movie is an entertaining comedy that additionally occurs to be a surprising evocation of the worry and craving that include standing on the precipice of maturity.

Blume’s novel featured a half-Jewish, half-Christian protagonist who was questioning the existence of God whereas awaiting salvation through the arrival of her interval, and keen to start out carrying a bra. These preoccupations come to touchingly radical life in Fremon Craig’s funny-sad adaption, the place total minutes of footage are dedicated to Margaret Simon (the outstanding Abby Ryder Fortson) attempting on an absorbent pad or investigating other ways to sport a bra when her physique doesn’t require one.

There’s little of the by-product about this movie, which is essentially due to Fortson’s incandescent efficiency at Margaret. She doesn’t play it tacky or glib as she navigates life as an almost-there. Her eyes brim with surprise and wariness however the physique half she places to biggest use is her shoulders, which inform epics with their slumps and herky jerks. Here’s a lady caught between childhood and maturity, caring and never caring.

The movie opens with Margaret returning residence from summer time camp in New Hampshire solely to be taught that her household is shifting from their New York Metropolis house to a New Jersey suburb. Within the guide, Margaret suspects that a big motivation for her dad and mom’ resolution to maneuver is to separate from Sylvia, her overbearing but enjoyable Jewish grandmother. “She doesn’t have a automotive, hates buses, and she or he thinks trains are soiled,” Margaret tells us within the guide. “So except Grandma plans to stroll, which is unlikely, I received’t be seeing a lot of her.”

This bitter notice is glossed over within the movie, however for good motive; Sylvia, performed with oomph by Kathy Bates, is a lodestar of affection and conspiracy. Different members of Margaret’s household are pulled to the fore within the movie model, too. Her father, who can look like a cardboard cutout of a suburban beginner within the guide, involves nebbishy life as performed by Benny Safdie. Her mom, rendered by Rachel McAdams, is a revelation, nothing just like the cloying type-A or cartoonish out-to-lunch artists that teenagers’ moms are likely to turn into on display. Right here is an artist who’s depicted as an empath. Margaret’s mom is afforded a storyline of her personal, and her battle to avoid the cliquish PTA scene and discover her footing within the artwork world feels much less like a B story than a satisfying cherry on prime that mirrors Margaret’s fraught relationship to her altering world. McAdams pulls off portraying an early Seventies mom with out a trace of the airless high quality that’s so widespread to historic dramas. Her expressiveness and softness of feeling typically make it arduous to do not forget that this movie is about within the Nixon period.

World-building falls to manufacturing designer Steve Saklad and Ann Roth, the costume designer. Whereas Margaret’s story is insular, it blooms to life due to their buzzy backgrounds and minty-fresh outfits. New York is a bustling retroscape that falls someplace between the pulsating orbit of Mad Males and the sepulchral New York of The Squid and the Whale. Here’s a secure cocoon of rotary telephones, mushroom soup-reliant recipes and wood-paneled station wagons.

The best decor is likely to be discovered within the room of Nancy (Elle Graham, who’s nailed the queen bee who isn’t a B-word). A peer and neighbor of Margaret, Nancy hosts the all-girls’ secret membership conferences for a contingent of Margaret’s sixth-grade class. Members should forswear socks, put on bras and spill the beans on all of the necessary points – particularly boys and durations.

Margaret and a buddy go to the pharmacy and buy Teenage Softies sanitary pads – simply in case. After which members of their group begin having information to share. These sequences might simply be performed for jokes, however when an necessary member of the gang goes to the toilet at a elaborate steakhouse and discovers that her time has come, the digicam lingers on her crying in worry, and her staid Lilly Pulitzer-wearing PTA mother is unable to supply a lot in the way in which of assist or heat when she eyes her daughter’s underwear. “Oh! All proper!” she gives crisply, and no viewer in her proper thoughts wouldn’t want she might barge into the bathroom.

When Margaret and her mother finally discover themselves in a toilet beneath comparable circumstances, the crying is of a unique selection. It’s all terribly scary, sure, however in Blume and Fremon Craig’s arms, rising up can be heart-stoppingly stunning.

This adaptation is an answered prayer.

• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is out in US cinemas on 28 April and within the UK on 19 Could

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