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I had no reservations about going to see this film by myself, although friends had queried why I wanted to see it at all. It had been the plan for us to go as a family but as soon as The Little Mermaid was released my local cinemas seemed to cease all evening and weekend showings of this and we couldn’t find a time when we could all go. Still, irrelevant of the subject matter I had heard it was a great film (which is actually all the reason I ever need) so off I went today, as a middle aged man, to see the movie version of Judy Blume’s classic story of preteen girls, fancying boys and periods. It did feel odd that it was only me and one similarly aged guy in the screening but I expect he found it a universal and wonderfully engaging film, just like I did.

The details of this narrative may revolve around a specific demographic but there is lots in it that viewers can relate to no matter their age or gender. Precisely what this is will depend on your own circumstances but whatever hits home is going to hit you right where you live. The relevant elements for me are around me being a parent, my three children all being girls, my upbringing being religious and me having had some degree of family estrangement. What is here on screen, as it was on the page, is life and it is portrayed in such as way as to be by turns, charming, funny, moving and inspiring. Eleven year old Margaret is such a captivating lead, whether it is her you identify with or someone else in the story, and the writing, screenwriting, directing and acting all come together perfectly to make a lovely movie.

The plot might be a little slight but it is easily enough to hang everything off. The drama comes from that event that every New York movie character fears above all else; moving to New Jersey, and we follow our young hero as she navigates new friends and a new school alongside those changes that everyone has to go through around that age. All of this is punctuated by her theological rumination as she literally questions the existence of a deity. When she poses the question of the title she is not merely attracting the supreme being’s attention, she is literally asking if they are there. The controversy around both this and all the talk of menstruation and panty liners no longer exists as it did when the source material was published in the 70s and we have got to a point, albeit only recently, where Pixar is covering the same material but it still feels like a necessary and welcome discussion.

The performances, headed up by one time daughter of Ant-Man fourteen year old Abby Ryder Fortson, are all strong. Margaret’s mum is played by fellow MCU alumni Rachel McAdams who seemed to be leading her own teen drama in Mean Girls only five minutes ago (told you I was middle aged) and Kathy Bates gives great support as the kind of grandma everyone wishes they had. Margaret’s secret girl gang are all good too and the way the film shows adolescent female friendship is highly effective. Heading up this group is the queen bee Nancy Wheeler who is played with more nuance than you might see from this kind of character elsewhere. Nancy Wheeler of course is now also the name one of the main players in Stranger Things which cannot be a coincidence, and to add to the connections the actor who plays this version , Elle Graham, is actually in that show herself. On this, it is a credit to this movie that it still feels relevant when we are now used to seeing our teen heroes fighting demigorgans, oppressive regimes, clown killers and evil wizards, but it absolutely does, more relevant in fact.

It is not widely known that Judy Bloom followed this at least partly autobiographical novel with another story that explored what it was to go through the same life stages as a boy but an adaptation of that couldn’t hope to have this much appeal. Entitled Then Again, Maybe I Won’t, it had a protagonist with a penchant for watching girls undress in their rooms across the street through a pair of binoculars, George McFly style, which I can assure you is not typical of teenage boys. I mean, there’s no maybe, you definitely shouldn’t, you creep. That just ain’t gonna sit with a modern audience. No wonder that book hasn’t endured in the same way and I’m not sure it shows Bloom had as much affection and empathy as she did with her own sex, especially when you consider that the name is actually in response to the point when he decides to stop peeping on his female neighbours. I’ll cease this creepy, borderline criminal behaviour he says (I paraphrase), following this with the titular expression ‘then again, maybe I won’t’. Ick!

Still, the original text Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret has lived on in the fifty plus years since its first publication and this brilliant film should guarantee it continues to be a mainstay, in that form and this. The movie should become an immediate classic too, for everyone.