Are you there God? It’s me Margaret Review
So I went to see the movie adaption of Are you there God? It’s me Margaret on Saturday with a friend and it was really good! My friend said it was very accurate to the book. I haven’t read the book and I really liked it! If you don’t know the story, the book and its adaptation are about 11 year old Margaret Simon, whose family moves from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs. This move causes her to contemplate everything she knows about life, friendship, and adolescence. She relies on her mother, Barbara, who offers love and support, and her grandmother, Sylvia, who misses her dearly and is coming to terms with finding happiness in the next phase of her life. The plot centres on Margaret adjusting to life in New Jersey, making new friends, and questioning religion while trying to find herself and figure out who she is.
The actors do a great job with the material and I recognized so many of the items in their house as stuff my grandmother had. Abby Fortson shines as Margaret and Kathy Bates, who plays her grandmother, is fantastic as always. Rachel McAdams shines as Barbara, the kind of mother we all wish we could have. Someone who is flawed, but who owns their mistakes, and who genuinely loves and wants what’s best for her child. Throughout the movie, you see what a loving and genuine relationship Margaret’s parents have. I found this depiction very refreshing as it’s rare to see good parental relationships like this on screen. I also loved how Barbara set boundaries at the end of the film when she tells the head of the PTA that she just doesn’t want to do something and returns to her love of painting. It’s so hard in life to just say no and stand up for yourself. To just be honest and say, ‘No I don’t want to.’ I love that they showed that.
As for Margaret’s new friends and classmates, the actors are similarly well cast. Amari Price and Katherine Kupferer play Margaret’s friends Janie and Gretchen wonderfully. And there’s always that one girl in the class who develops before the others and has a rough go of it. Isol Young, who plays classmate Laura Danker, plays that perfectly. Margaret also has a friend and neighbour named Nancy Wheeler which as a Stranger Things fan I could not get over. She comes from a wealthy respectable family of course. I also really felt for Margaret over the no socks with shoes thing. I get blisters really badly to this day if I don’t wear socks or sockettes before I put shoes on. I felt her pain.
They also perfectly captured how fights between different religions a lot of time aren’t even about religion. Everyone gets so caught up in what religion Margaret should be that they miss out on what’s really important: whether she’s happy and getting to spend time with her. I love that in the end Margaret’s grandmother Sylvia finds love and a community of her own. I love that Margaret finds God in her own way and finds a way to bring others into the fold and be friends with them rather than being cliquey. All in all Are you there God? It’s me Margaret is both a faithful adaptation and a great film to watch whether you’ve read the book or not.
