Review of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, directed by Kelly Fremon Craig

I will admit, I was never one of the kids who had to read Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. I grew up like a lot of other Generation Z kids my age that ended up consuming Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and the Twilight series when it was at the peak of its fame in 2009.

I was nine years old and reading Twilight—imagine what a disaster that was. Maybe that’s why I ended up the way I did. Anyways, I never read this book, but when I saw there was going to be a movie version after getting the trailer one day at the theater, I off handedly mentioned it to my mother.

Her face lit up immediately when she heard that this was going to be a movie. As it turns out, since I had never discussed these kinds of things with her, she had grown up with the book and remembered key moments.

We made plans to go see the movie on a matinee, since she gets the senior discount and I had AMC A List, and so we headed off the theater. Surrounded by other mothers with their young daughters, and the random young guy sitting by himself in the back, I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I should’ve expected it would be good because of how Craig did The Edge of Seventeen.

Onwards with the review!

When eleven-year-old Margaret moves from New York to New Jersey, her life is about to change.

At the beginning of the movie, we meet Margaret right before her life is about to be changed forever. She comes home from her summer camp, gets off the bus, and goes back to her family’s New York City apartment when her grandmother drops a bombshell on her: her parents and she are going to be moving to New Jersey.

Naturally, Margaret gets really upset at the thought of leaving everything and everyone she knows behind, but her mom promises her that because her father is going to get a promotion, she can now stay at home and be with Margaret instead of perpetually working as an art teacher.

And so, despite the protests of Margaret’s grandmother, they move to New Jersey. Immediately a wealthier neighbor girl, Nancy, takes a liking towards Margaret and invites her over to play in the sprinklers, where Margaret meets the new object of her affections: Moose.

It’ll take the entire movie before these two even acknowledge that they like each other, but in this moment, Nancy decides to initiate Margaret into her friend group with two other girls. They make up rules for each other, ranging from discussing who their crushes were openly to telling each other when they’ll get their periods.

Considering this is a confusing time of life, Margaret begins to have a minor existentialist crisis over all of this. Like her friends, they all desperately want to get their periods and do workouts to increase their boob sizes, then talk about boys in the comfort of their rooms.

They are mean towards a girl who actually hit puberty in their class, as she is the subject of intense bullying because of the fact she hit puberty. The kids all call her promiscuous and sexual, make up rumors that she kisses boys and is sexual. In actuality, a lot of these girls are probably just jealous they haven’t hit puberty yet themselves.

We also see Margaret wanting to learn about religion, as she grew up in an atheist household. Her father comes from a Jewish life and her mother a Christian one, and they agreed not to teach Margaret about religion because one day she can make the decision herself.

When she goes back to visit her grandmother in New York and they go to a show, she asks to go experience the synagogue the next morning, despite Margaret not understanding anything that’s going on. Back home in Jersey, she attends the local Black church services with one of her friends in order to learn about Christianity.

There are quite a few subplots that are connected to this. In one, Margaret’s mother joins the PTA and over exerts herself with volunteering for committees, even if she learns she hates the activities they do throughout the time on the PTA.

Margaret’s grandmother in New York misses her dearly and invites her to come up whenever she feels lonely, especially because she has nothing to do now that her family has relocated. In another subplot, Margaret tries to befriend the girl everyone bullies and only makes the situation worse.

These plots ultimately connect because Margaret’s mother’s estranged parents, who stopped talking her because she married a Jew, come to visit randomly.

Margaret’s father’s mother also comes to the house when she hears about this, and everything starts arguing about what kind of religion Margaret should be, effectively pissing her and her parents off. She was already upset because she had to cancel her plans to visit her grandmother in Florida, her friendship with Nancy was in shambles because she learned Nancy lied about getting her period while on vacation, and nothing goes right for Margaret.

Over the course of the year the movie takes place in, Margaret learns a lot about what it means to grow up, and that it isn’t as easy at it seems originally. A coming of age story is a difficult kind of relationship with life and religion, and sometimes we want to give up, but still we keep moving on at the end of the day.

Overall Thoughts

It’s a sweet movie, and I am glad I saw it in theaters. There were a lot of really funny moments that had people in the theater dying, even the random dads and men who were dragged along with spouses and families to see it. My mother and I agreed that we enjoyed the experience a lot, and that it captured the time well.

My mother came out of the showing talking about her childhood and what it reminded her of, since she was about the same age as Margaret when 1970 was happening. Even for modern audiences, a lot of what is discussed in the movie is relevant across all ages, not indicative of a preteen girl who wants to grow up. Give this one a chance if you haven’t already.

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