Matilda

MOVIE DETAILS

Rating: 7.0 out of 10
Director: Danny DeVito
Writer: Roald Dahl, Nicholas Kazan, Robin Swicord
Star: Pam Ferris, Mara Wilson, Embeth Davidtz, Rhea Perlman, Danny DeVito
Genres: Comedy/Family/Fantasy
Release Date: August 2, 1996 (United States)

Matilda

To say Roald Dahl was a generally unpleasant person would be an understatement, perhaps that’s why his children’s stories are so appealing. He nursed grudges from childhood, he didn’t trust adults and he wasn’t moved by false sentiment. It may not make kids feel warm inside, but they know Dahl is for real: He’s writing out of strong feeling rather than to be adorable. Take the character of Trunchbull in the darkly comic new film “Matilda.” Trunchbull must be a woman because she’s somebody’s aunt, but she’s never called “Miss” and we see at once that “Mrs.” would be out of the question. A champion shot-putter and hammer-thrower in the 1972 Olympics, we’re told; now she’s a school principal and dominatrix at Crunchem Hall, a terrible grade school whose motto is: “When you are having fun, you are not learning.”

To this school comes Matilda Wormwood (Mara Wilson), a very smart little girl whose parents neglect her when they’re not insulting her. Left home alone all day, Matilda has taught herself to read and walked to the library and by age 6 has read not only “Heidi” and “Ivanhoe,” but also “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “Moby Dick.” When she tells her parents (Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman) she wants to go to school, her dad replies: “Nonsense! Who would sign for the packages?” But when he meets the redoubtable Trunchbull he declares that at last he has found the right school for Matilda. Trunchbull is played by Pam Ferris with great spirit and well-hidden but genuine humor.

She is not nice. She tells one unfortunate child: “Sit down, you squirming worm of vomit!” Later, she calls another child “You villainous sack of dog slime!” When a cute little blond girl dares to wear her hair in pigtails, Trunchbull grabs the child by the pigtails, whirls her around and hurls her through the air like a hammer in the Olympics and of course the movie doesn’t neglect to show the girl just missing a spiked fence before landing safely in a flower bed.

Trunchbull is one of those villains kids can relish, because she’s too ridiculous to be taken seriously and yet really is mean and evil, like the wicked witch in “Snow White.” And since most children have at one time or another felt that their parents were not nice enough to them, they may also enjoy Matilda’s parents. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood and their older son spend all their time eating fast food and watching TV; when Matilda says she’d rather read, her incredulous father cries: “Read? What do ya wanna read for when you got a perfectly good TV set right here?”

Crunchem Hall is a school that would have appalled Dickens. Children are punished by being locked alone in a steamy closet with nails sticking through its walls. But redemption comes in the form of saintly teacher Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz), who is astonished when little Matilda does difficult math problems in her head, and eventually becomes her guardian and best friend..

“Matilda” is not even close to being a “children’s movie”, although it will most likely appeal to older children. It is a dark family comedy about dumb parents, mean teachers, and a brave little girl; so it should come as no surprise that Danny DeVito stars in and directs the film. Once you consider this, you realize that his other directing credits include “Throw Momma From the Train” and “The War of the Roses,” which tells us that he must have some sort of deep morbid fascination with dysfunctional families (the family life in his “Hoffa” was not exactly functional either).

Throughout the entire movie there is never a moment when we feel like DeVito is anything but very serious about what he’s doing (except for maybe towards the end when things start looking up). He embraces Dahl’s macabre vision. Whatever it was that hurt Dahl so much, he never let go of it; and this can be seen in all of his children’s stories (like “James and the Giant Peach” or “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”). It seems like DeVito vibrates on the same frequency as him too. “Matilda” doesn’t talk down to kids, nor does it get overly sentimental so ultimately it comes off as genuine and sincere. Plus, it’s funny.

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