Perhaps there is no easier film to recommend this year so far than Kelly Fremon Craig’s beautiful adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic coming of age novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. This perfect drama-comedy film so effortlessly balances humour, heart and truth that one can’t help but be balled over by its striking simplicity and (again) effortlessness in how Craig tells this ever so charming tale of an ever so difficult period in every woman’s life, by also chiefly expanding the tale to include tales of so many other women in their lives beyond childhood. Craig has made a true perfect film.
Overall Craig has mounted a sturdy, efficient and structurally marvellous adaptation that manages to bring the original Judy Blume text to the screen whilst also making powerful and effective changes of her own. The masterstroke of Craig’s adaptation is making the story not only of the titular Margaret, but also making the story of a trio of women coming of age of sorts at different periods of their lives. Throughout, Craig’s writing and adaptation is superb and so deftly handled between drama and comedy marking a perfect blend of humour and heart. Craig as a director keeps her pace and makes a thoroughly entertaining and enjoyable piece of work. Abby Ryder Forston as the titular Margaret is a wonderfully revelatory child performance that brings the whole piece into focus and deliberateness that it could possibly lose without such a stellar lead turn. Rachel McAdams appears here in another great turn as Margarets mother who too is going through her changes as she adapts into a new phase of her motherhood. McAdams, like Forston and like so many other turns in the film, so effortlessly manages to make us laugh, cry and feel those ever so impactful nostalgic feelings that can’t help but emotionally devastate us. Whilst again still managing to make us laugh and feel touching warmth. Kathy Bates as Margaret’s grandmother may even be the biggest performance takeaway from it all. She is as excellent as she always is and so incredibly entertaining, heartfelt and touching as this figure in Margaret’s life, overall the film just so incredibly makes one feel touched and moved. Craig has achieved a masterstroke in this genre of dramedy that so disappointingly does not rear its head as often as I personally would so like.
It just really such a perfect tender piece of work that one can’t help but fall in love with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and wish to see once more as soon as they leave. Craig’s touch effects every part of the film from the overall design to every single performance in the whole ensemble. Craig has made a wonderful film that betters on the already solid work she achieved in her previous coming of age effort with The Edge of Seventeen.
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Craig has made a 10/10. I left the cinema with a ‘high 9’ on my lips, but as time goes by, there’s just very little I find to fault in the film. Any arguments that the film is a little slight in it’s nature perhaps are not only cynical but a little wrong it feels. This is as perfect a coming of age film as we have had in some time and just as has been the case with Stand By Me for so many years with myself, this is the sort of film that perhaps hyperbolically makes one want to have children just to show them this film! Again, rather hyperbolic. But that is the emotional power of the truth and warmth of the delightful film.
P.S. I don’t know why it was such a weird visceral reaction because ultimately it does mean a great thing, that wonderful talent is involved in the film, but to see James L. Brook’s Gracie Films logo at the start of a film and so huge on a big screen, rather than small and rushed at the end of The Simpsons really shocked me.
- -Thomas Carruthers
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