Hollywood Elsewhere won’t be submitting to Kelly Fremon Craig‘s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret until tomorrow afternoon (Thursday, 4.27) at 3 pm. Hoping to hate on it, but holding my water until then.
Repeating: I HATED Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen. I’m not saying I’m already planning to get my hate-on for Craig’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate, 4.28), which is based on Judy Blume’s 1970 novel. I haven’t seen it and will naturally wait for a screening, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not feeing the negativity from afar. Because I can.
In the meantime I’m deriving comfort from portions of Amy Nicholson’s 4.20.23 Variety review, which is more negative than mixed.
Comfort excerpt #1: “This adaptation of Judy Blume‘s 1970 novel, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, seems uneasy putting funny, flawed and all-too-realistic Margaret on screen exactly as she is.”
Comfort excerpt #2: “Today, it’s not enough to be representative: Margaret must be a role model, too. (Even an accusation that she plagiarizes her homework from the encyclopedia gets gently buffed.) The result is a nostalgia hit with saccharine artificiality. While that might disappoint Blume fans, young audiences may not miss the original novel’s more honest truths, especially as they’ve been trained to expect tidy stories where protagonists fix their faults and here even (gah!) assure the adults in the film that they’re raising them just fine.
Comfort excerpt #3: “Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson), an earnest thing with big, curious brown eyes, comes home from summer camp to find herself thrust into transition. She spends the film in flux. Her parents, Barbara (Rachel McAdams) and Herb (Benny Safdie), raised her without a religion, a vagueness she attempts to resolve by visiting various Jewish temples and Christian churches and chatting with her loose concept of a deity. In her first prayer to God, Margaret says, ‘I’ve heard great things about you.'”
HE interjection: What “great things” exactly? Don’t go there.
Comfort excerpt #4: “As for Margaret’s dad, quirky filmmaker and actor Safdie wears retro fatherhood like a Halloween costume, sounding so insincere as he professes his eagerness to mow a lawn that we’re tempted to add subtext to his thin role.”
Comfort excerpt #4: “As charming as the film is in its best moments, it’s hard not to be frustrated as it backpedals from the book’s awareness that not all wrongs are righted. Sometimes, our heroines might stay buddies with bullies. Sometimes they might run from conflict and never explain themselves. Sometimes, they might even hurt people without making amends. Sometimes frank talk is more impactful than an idealized fantasy.”