Judy Blume Forever review: Groundbreaking author gets the documentary treatment
Fans of Are You There God? It's Me Margaret will find their love of the writer reaffirmed in Prime Video's pleasant but unchallenging walk through her career
Judy Blume has been a foundational staple of young adult fiction for about 50 years, so it’s not terribly surprising that she should be the subject of biographical investigation on Prime Video. Documentarians Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok profile the 85-year-old author in their film Judy Blume Forever, a title that’s as reflective of their flattering opinion of the woman as it is a comment on the considerable impact Blume has had on generations of women.
Whether this unmitigated positivity, enhanced by Blume’s enthusiastic participation as an interviewee, is the result of a life lived well or is cause for skepticism of bias will largely fall to the viewer to decide. Yet Pardo and Wolchock’s film feels particularly timely, not just as a tie-in for the upcoming big-screen adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but as a rallying cry for the values that Blume’s life and work have always stood for; empathetic outreach to children, frankness toward feminine sexuality, and continued access to resources for kids to better understand the world around them.
Structurally, Judy Blume Forever is as standard as documentaries designed for streaming platforms come, with Blume taking center stage to tell the story of her life while notable talking heads fill in the details of her impact on themselves as individuals and in the culture at large. The interviewees range from notable actors and television writers who have explored feminine adolescence in their own work—including Lena Dunham, Pen15’s Anna Konkle, and Molly Ringwald—to authors who have been inspired by Blume’s writing, such as Tayari Jones and Alex Gino.
Most interesting, though, is perhaps Lorrie Kim, one of many women who wrote to Blume throughout her adolescence, seeking comfort from an author who truly understood what she was going through when she couldn’t speak to her own parents. Collectively, these interviews tell the story of a woman whose keen insights into the anxieties of pubescent children played an important role in young lives as a sex educator and an empathetic ear.