(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . DVD review: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-02 I have not read the book. I’ve been aware of Judy Blume’s classic novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret for almost as long as I’ve been able to read English. As a teenager, I was more interested in Sherlock Holmes stories. But the story of a young girl eagerly waiting to menstruate for the first time turns out to be surprisingly relatable even to a man without daughters. It’s not just about her first period, it’s also about Margaret’s search for her religion. My interest now in this movie and the book it’s based on is mostly due to the fact that the book has been banned, or in some cases “age-restricted,” which authors like Amanda Gorman find just as offensive as an outright ban. The boys are not worried Nancy’s dance will give them breasts. Movie producers have also been aware of this book for a long time. Judy Blume had acquired a reputation for not selling movie rights to anything. It was only Margaret that Blume was withholding the movie rights to. She probably imagined many more different ways this movie could have gone wrong than I can think of. Can you imagine, for example, how J. J. Abrams would have done this movie? The year is 1992, a thirty-something Margaret is shooting a heavy machine gun from the back of a Jeep, Rat Patrol-style, as the Jeep runs at a hundred miles per hour across a New York bridge. Then her friend Nancy shouts something about where in New Jersey — and when — she thinks the second half of the MacGuffin is at. Cut to 1970, when neither Margaret nor Nancy have gotten their first periods. And we don’t understand anything that’s going on until Ambassador Spock shows up at the beginning of the third act to finally explain what the hell is going on. No thanks, J. J. Abrams. What about Robert Bresson? The French auteur would have added a baby that Margaret has to take care of, and he would have also added a tragic ending in which Margaret rolls into a river to drown. Oh wait, Bresson did make that movie: Mouchette. Came out the same year as Blume’s book. To be fair, I doubt J. J. Abram would approach Judy Blume about any of her books. And Robert Bresson can’t anymore, and he didn’t when he had the chance; he died in 1999. Margaret didn’t quite understand what was said in the synagogue, but she was happy to be there with her grandma. Maybe Blume wasn’t so much worried about extraneous crap being added as she was about story details being left out or sanitized, pun intended? It wasn’t until Kelly Fremon Craig came along that Blume was convinced the time had come to make her most famous book into a movie. Craig was best known for The Edge of Seventeen (2016), her début as a writer-director. Craig worked with Blume to write the screenplay, hewing very close to the source material but adding depth to Margaret’s mom. Craig was in full agreement with producer James L. Brooks that the movie would be set in 1970 just like the book. It seems to have gone without saying that there would be no flash-forwards and the story would be told in a straight line, as it should. Margaret Simon (Abby Ryder Fortson) is the daughter of a Herb (Benny Safdie), who’s Jewish, and art instructor Barbara (Rachel McAdams), who’s Christian but presumably not Catholic. Margaret’s paternal grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) wants Margaret’s religion to be Jewish, but her parents have agreed that they’ll let Margaret decide what her religion is when she grows up. Janie (Amari Alexis Price, center) takes her friend Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson, right) to church. In the summer of 1970, Margaret went to Camp Minnewaska and she had a lot of fun there. Now she comes home to New York, but Barbara and Herb have decided they will move to New Jersey following his promotion at work. Barbara will continue to teach art, but without the pressures of academia. Sylvia will stay in New York for now. Margaret loves her grandmother a lot and will miss her very much. At a school in New Jersey, Margaret starts the fourth grade with teacher Mr. Benedict (Echo Kellum), and, easing her worries about leaving the Big Apple, makes new friends. The leader of the friend group is Nancy (Elle Graham), she thinks she’s more knowledgeable and more sophisticated than everyone else. I’m sure you can relate to having such a friend, unless you happen to be the Nancy of your friends. Nancy’s already wearing an actually sized bra, which she credits to doing a special dance with the chant “We must increase our bust!” Nancy hasn’t gotten her first period yet, though. Janie (Amari Alexis Price, left) and Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) buy "sanitary napkins" at the local pharmacy, but they run away from the store as if they had stolen the product. Like Margaret, both Gretchen (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) and Janie (Amari Alexis Price) wear training bras. I don’t know if Janie’s black in the book, but the kind of person who would complain about that sort of thing has probably been filtered out long before this can become a point of contention. Laura Danker (Isol Young) is not in Nancy’s clique. Laura is the tallest girl in the class, towering over the boys as well, and the subject of mean, baseless gossip. Naturally Margaret and her friends are curious about their changing bodies, and about boys. They furtively look at an anatomy book, and remark that the penis looks saggy and sad. They also look at an issue of Playboy magazine. At a presentation about menstruation at school, Mr. Benedict quite hilariously makes a discreet exit from the auditorium. Which might be like some fathers in real life at a theater screening of this movie. Margaret goes to New York to visit her grandmother, they go see Pirates of Penzance (that’s the one with the “modern major general” song). The next day, Margaret asks Sylvia to take her to temple. Barbara and Herb are not at all pleased to hear of this, even after Margaret explains it was her own idea, not Sylvia’s. Of course Margaret doesn’t know that the kneeler in the confessional is not for sitting. Jerry Seinfeld will make the same mistake. Barbara makes a small overture to reconnect with her estranged parents, Margaret’s paternal grandparents, who strongly objected to Barbara marrying a Jewish man. This sets up a confrontation for later on in the movie. This is a beautiful movie, you’ll laugh and you’ll cry with Margaret. This production has Judy Blume’s stamp of approval. The movie is rated PG-13 “for thematic material involving sexual education and some suggestive material.” If you have children, I’m not going to tell you whether or not you should watch this movie with your kids. That’s for you to decide, I have no guidance to give on that matter. But I do think you should watch this movie with your spouse. Much more helpful than the enumeration of mild nudity and drinking in the IMDb Parents’ Guide is the heads up that there is a scene of a family row in the movie, which “could be intense for kids sensitive to family bickering.” If any parent reading this wants to write a review of this movie for Daily Kos, with his or her perspective as father or mother to a young girl, please go ahead and let Movie Review Group know so we can reblog it. I give the movie ★★★★★ minus a quarter star for the Hans Zimmer score — I think Michael Kamen or Alan Silvestri would have been better, or maybe a woman composer? The DVD has some very good special features, and in fact for the first time ever I give the DVD more stars than the movie it contains: ★★★★★. The special features include making of featurettes, including an interview with author Judy Blume, deleted scenes, a roundtable discussion and the trailer to round things out. For the roundtable discussion, producer James L. Brooks mostly just listens as the author, the director and the star talk about the book and the movie. There are also two very short deleted scenes, one of which I think I would have left in the final cut: Sylvia and Margaret eating sundaes. I don’t know if Kathy Bates has grandchildren, but she’s so natural as Margaret’s grandmother that I would not want to cut out any of their scenes. At an hour and 46 minutes, this movie feels neither too short nor too long, but just right. The sundae scene would not have hurt that, I think. Judy Blume inspects Margaret's bedroom set for the movie production. I also want to give this movie, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., an honorable mention award for title with the most punctuation, beating out all the Star Wars episodes and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. P.S. Can anyone identify this bird? He shows up briefly and Barbara tries to paint him with watercolors or acrylics but he’s gone before she can get much of anything on the canvas. What bird is this!? Please let me know in the comments. 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