Review: Are You There God? offers a sweet wallow in nostalgia and innocence

Despite the clunkiest, most uninviting of titles, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret offers a film of completely beguiling charm – a gorgeously entertaining celebration of childhood as it really ought to be.

Of course, it’s a childhood full of anguish, full of hopes and uncertainties, awkwardnesses and embarrassments, but this is childhood 1970 style. 11-year-old Margaret of the title might think she’s having the toughest time (hence all her little “Are you there’s?” to God), but goodness she doesn’t know she’s born. Childhood 2023 style would be full of all the ghastliness of the internet, the horrors of Facebook, the appalling hold of the so-called influencers and the grisly glare of 24/7 online visibility. So yep, Margaret’s is a very, very old-fashioned, super-innocent childhood – and that’s a massive part of the appeal.

It’s a wonderful performance from Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret, a young actress who captures all the vulnerabilities, self-doubts and spirit of this lovely girl – a girl who is uprooted from the New York and the grandmother she adores to live in New Jersey when her father gets promotion. Even worse, she’s caught between religions. Her mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams), daughter of devout – devout in the sense of bigoted – Christian parents was disowned when she married Jewish Herb Simon (Benny Safdie). But inevitably their absence in her life niggles away at Barbara to the extent that after a dozen years of silence she writes to them. They promptly invite themselves over where they pretty much immediately parade all that is so very awful about their concept of their religion, with poor Margaret plonked firmly in the middle, especially when her adoring Jewish New York grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) pitches up.

Along the way, Margaret is contending with the meanness and competitiveness of the girls she’s fallen in with, the race (which she is losing) to develop a bust and the race (which she is never going to win) to have her first period. There’s a lovely moment towards the end when Barbara summons the battered Margaret to a sofa and says simply “It’s so tiring when you try so hard.” These are good people at whom life has been throwing all sorts of pre-internet obstacles. It’s a very sweet moment.

But one big complaint, though. A huge part of the attraction of the trailer which has been playing for ages was that it gloriously blasted out George Harrison’s What Is Life, one of those tracks that just lifts you the moment you hear it. It’s the perfect track for this film, as the trailer seemed to recognise. But where was it in the film? Nowhere to be seen or heard. Difficult not to feel a little cheated even if it is a cracking soundtrack anyway. A burst of George Harrison would have been the icing on this slice of rich and very tasty cinematic treat.

We are clearly going to be seeing great things from Abby Ryder Fortson; but Rachel McAdams never makes a duff film, and there is something very endearing about the mother she gives us, so keen to do the right thing.

Many millions grew up on this book and will pore over this big-screen adaptation. Let’s hope they like it. But there is much to savour for the millions of us for whom the book is completely new territory.

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