‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’ review: Judy Blume’s classic gets the wise, funny, moving movie it deserves

At the end of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” the hugely rewarding film version of Judy Blume’s 1970 classic, the characters played by Abby Ryder Fortson and Rachel McAdams have just shared a momentous private moment, through tears and laughter, in the close quarters of the family bathroom.

No spoilers, but: The depth of feeling in this scene, conveyed by these two, isn’t what you find in most commercial movies, certainly not most coming-of-age films, and certainly not most coming-of-age films made in America. Watching Fortson go through every push-pull and emotional swerve as 12-year-old Margaret, with McAdams unerring in the newly expanded role of her mother, Barbara, is a privilege and a pleasure.

Blume’s novel threw millions of real-life Margarets a lifeline. It remains, in some parts of our world, a banned and controversial book. It talks plainly about menstruation, bras and a protagonist who uses God — though she’s an agnostic with an asterisk, who may or may not find the religion right for her — as an unseen counselor and sounding board. This book deserved a really good film version, and writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig (”The Edge of Seventeen,” also really good) captures Blume’s humane wit and spirit, while adding some new emotional and narrative wrinkles.

One adjustment, a significant one: Barbara, Margaret’s mother, now matters in ways she didn’t quite matter on the page. Played with quicksilver emotional insight by McAdams — truly this is awards-worthy work, if anyone cares to remember it a few months from now — Barbara comes from a fundamentalist Christian background, though she’s essentially buried it. Her parents have cut her out of their lives for marrying a Jew (Benny Safdie). Even without knowing that set of grandparents, Margaret’s life in Manhattan has been a happy one, with an in-town grandmother (Kathy Bates) who takes her to Broadway shows and not-so-secretly prays for Margaret to covert to Judaism.

“Are You There God?” works on a simple narrative line, after the family’s disruptive move to a Jersey suburb, where starched and brittle PTA ladies make her mom look like a Woodstock hippie. Margaret soon makes friends with the sociable if controlling Nancy (Elle Graham), who convenes a “secret club” where the members discuss cute boys and swear an oath to let each other know when their first periods arrive. Blume’s source text, as does the movie, uses familiar signposts of awkward social interaction — a closet for kissing, or whatever, at a boy’s birthday party; a spin-the-bottle suspense sequence — in fresh and observant ways. The book may not be edgy, and the movie isn’t, either. But it’s warm to the touch and straight from the heart, without a lot of conspicuous engineering.

Filmmaker Craig remembers how it was, and is. She respects the not-knowing or extreme-humiliation parts of any budding adolescent’s years, nailing the moments of wry comedy (there’s a wonderful visual gag involving sanitary napkins rolling along the world’s slowest checkout conveyer belt) as well as the sudden, piercing dives into anger, or anguish, and back out again. The time period stays in 1970, gently but firmly, with a few tin-ear moments (the word “supermodel” is a decade off or more) but only a few.

I don’t love Hans Zimmer’s aggressively reassuring score, but you hardly notice it because the acting’s so easy and true, never more so than when McAdams and Fortson share the frame.

Late in the film, after a pot roast dinner with her long-estranged parents and her mother-in-law, Barbara and the equally tempest-tossed Margaret share a cathartic moment on the couch. The move, their new life, their feelings— it’s exhausting, Mom says, “trying so hard all the time.” An ordinary extraordinary line. There’s so much love in this moment; “Are You There God?” makes sure we see it and feel it, even when things get difficult.

My confession: Until this week, I hadn’t read a single Judy Blume book (!) until this one. I could cry when I think of my 12- or 15- or whatever-year-old self, the kid who really could’ve used Blume’s insights into, well, all of it.

My reward: This unassuming, generous, almost perfectly balanced film version of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

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'ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET.'

3.5 stars (out of 4)

Rated: PG-13 (for thematic material involving sexual education and some suggestive material)

Running time: 1:45

How to watch: In theaters Friday

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