ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET

Cert ★★★★

PG In cinemas now

Shortly after its 1970 publication, Judy Blume’s coming-of-age novel was banned by US school libraries for its supposedly dangerous revelations.

Apparently, adolescent girls had periods, fretted about their changing bodies and might even question the existence of God.

Now, with Young Adult novels established as a bookshop’s most lucrative section, we have the long-overdue film adaptation.

It’s heart-warming, sharply written, wonderfully cast and will no doubt feel extremely tame to the social media-savvy girls of 2023.

Retaining its 1970s setting, it stars Abby Ryder Fortson as a hugely likeable 11-year-old Margaret, who is uprooted from New York when her dad Herb (Benny Safdie) gets a job in New Jersey. Margaret desperately misses her Jewish grandmother Sylvia (Kathy Bates) – Herb’s mum – while her mother Barbara (Rachel McAdams) is struggling to adjust to life as a stay-at-home mum after quitting her art teaching career.

Margaret’s new life starts promisingly

when she’s recruited into a new friendship group and a girls-only club which revolves around frank chats about boys, bras and sanitary towels.

But the pressures of womanhood weigh heavily on her young shoulders.

More problems arise when her maternal grandparents visit for the first time. Devout Christians, they broke all contact with Barbara when she married a Jewish man.

Margaret doesn’t know if she belongs in the temple or the church or if, like her parents, she should give up on the idea of religion altogether.

Weirdly, the only controversy surrounding the film was stoked by the once-fearless Blume when, weeks before the film’s release, she rowed back on an expression of support for writer and feminist JK Rowling.

As this touching and refreshingly sensible drama seems to know exactly what a woman is, she probably made that U-turn to avoid a second boycott.

UPHEAVAL Margaret’s life is turned upside down