Puber­ty is an adven­ture in the Are You There, God? It’s Me, Mar­garet trailer

Even though we all have to do it, there’s no humil­i­a­tion quite so acute as going through puber­ty, that mag­i­cal time when ram­pant hor­mones and unex­pect­ed bod­i­ly changes ren­der us unrec­og­niz­able to our­selves as we’re thrust into life’s first iden­ti­ty cri­sis. Try­ing on dif­fer­ent per­son­ae, flit­ting around social groups at school, reck­on­ing with the Cro­nen­ber­gian hor­rors tak­ing place between one’s legs — it’s such stuff as cringe com­e­dy gold is made of.

Square one for this proud tra­di­tion of embar­rass­ment is Judy Blume’s sem­i­nal com­ing-of-age nov­el Are You There, God? It’s Me, Mar­garet, a wide­ly-read clas­sic the author has care­ful­ly guard­ed from gen­er­a­tions of film­mak­ers hop­ing to adapt it. Until, that is, The Edge of Sev­en­teen direc­tor Kel­ly Fre­mon Craig brought an impas­sioned pitch that Blume couldn’t deny, her from-the-heart earnest­ness evi­dent in the first trail­er post­ed just this morning.

Abby Ryder Fort­son leads as plucky Mar­garet Simon, a sixth-grad­er uproot­ed from her life in New York as her fam­i­ly — goyis­che mom Rachel McAdams, Jew­ish dad Ben­ny Safdie, and grand­ma Kathy Bates — relo­cate to sub­ur­ban New Jer­sey in the sum­mer of 1970. As she con­sid­ers her split reli­gious her­itage, she and her gag­gle of new friends go through such time­less mile­stones of ear­ly adult­hood as mor­ti­fy­ing sex­u­al-health pre­sen­ta­tions at school, crush­es on a carousel of inter­change­ably gan­g­ly boys, and the momen­tous pur­chase of the first train­ing bra.

All the while, the adults have their own bag­gage to unpack: Mom’s in over her head with all the vol­un­teer posi­tions she’s tak­en just to fit in, Dad’s a life­long city mouse sud­den­ly forced to oper­ate a lawn­mow­er, and Grandma’s griev­ing her recent­ly depart­ed hus­band while look­ing for a renewed sense of pur­pose in life. Teenagers may believe that all of exis­tence is con­spir­ing against them, but at any age, we’re all still in a per­pet­u­al state of going-through-it-ness.

Ulti­mate­ly, the trail­er posits this take on Blume’s prose as a whole­some salute to girl­hood in all its messy won­der, cel­e­brat­ing the humor and inner strength along with the awk­ward dis­com­fort. A world pre­mière is soon to come at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val pri­or to a the­atri­cal run lat­er this year, at which time anoth­er wave of girls will expe­ri­ence the eter­nal sto­ry for the first time in a new form — and, one hopes, seek out the nov­el that inspired it.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Mar­garet comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 28 April, 2023.