For over fifty years, Judy Blume’s classic and groundbreaking novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. has impacted generations with its timeless coming of age story, insightful humor, and candid exploration of life’s biggest questions. In Lionsgate’s big-screen adaptation, 11-year-old Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is uprooted from her life in New York City for the suburbs of New Jersey, going through the messy and tumultuous throes of puberty with new friends in a new school. She relies on her mother, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), who is also struggling to adjust to life outside the big city, and her adoring grandmother, Sylvia (Kathy Bates), who isn’t happy they moved away and likes to remind them every chance she gets.

Blume was approached numerous times during the past fifty years to have her book adapted to film, but she had been reluctant until now, at age 85, she found what has turned out to be the ideal movie-making team for her book. Although in New York Times critic Melena Ryzik’s review ‘Beloved, Banned, Finally Adapted’ she points out that “Judy Blume’s 1970 novel hits the big screen at a difficult political moment for a story with themes of bodily autonomy and religious choice,” it hasn’t stopped many from celebrating what has to be considered a movie break-through moment in family films. The movie is also proving to be a hit especially with older women who grew up in the 1970s and 80s and their mothers who struggled through puberty with them. The critics have almost unanimously good things to say about this film.