Again, the SAG strike knocked this one down. A shame, because it is perfect. This was the book that changed my whole world. This film version, decades in the making, hits just the right notes. It's not "Hollywood" -- no skinny unrealistically pretty people. The known stars in the film commit entirely and you see the characters, not the actors. The lead, Abby Fortsun, is not a 20 year-old playing a 12 year-old. It's a clean and direct film, marking that magic and too short moment in time when girls stop being girls and start being women. Abby is kind of a hot mess, but the kind you love to love. Her mother is neither absent nor out-of-touch, something we see all too much in films of the current day. And the girl's life isn't bad, isn't good, it just ... is. Not only did the book touch me deeply as a pre-teen, but the film shows why. It's real. It is the life I lived, the life so many kids my age lived. These kids, all of us, are just searching for belonging and a sense of who they are. Very rarely since has any book or movie gotten this right ... it is a simple story we can totally relate to.
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