Matilda (film)
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| Matilda (1996) | |
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| Directed by | Danny DeVito |
| Produced by | Danny DeVito Michael Shamberg Stacey Sher Liccy Dahl |
| Written by | Roald Dahl (novel) Nicholas Kazan Robin Swicord |
| Starring | Mara Wilson Danny DeVito Rhea Perlman Embeth Davidtz Pam Ferris Brian Levinson |
| Distributed by | TriStar Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 2, 1996 |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $36,000,000 |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Matilda is a 1996 film directed by Danny DeVito. It is based on Roald Dahl's children's novel. The film was released by TriStar Pictures.
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[edit] Plot
[edit] Synopsis
Right from birth, Matilda Wormwood was different from the rest of her family. Even as a baby, she showed remarkable intelligence by writing her name in spinach she had spilled on the kitchen counter. Her parents and older brother, however, are not the nicest of people: Her father, Harry, sells used cars for unfair prices while her mother, Zinnia, is unemployed and spends her days playing bingo. Matilda loves reading from an early age, which her father disapproves of, and he punishes her by sending her to her room simply for being smart. Matilda takes her revenge by pouring her father's hair oil down the sink, and replacing it with peroxide, turning his hair blonde. Later, she puts glue in his hat, so it sticks to his head.
Matilda is enrolled at Crunchem Hall where children are terrorized by the principal, Miss Agatha Trunchbull, an ex-Olympic champion. Matilda learns from another girl, Hortensia, that the Trunchbull's acts of terrorism include throwing a boy out the window for eating two M&M's during class, and locking kids in the chokey, which, as described by Hortensia, is "a tall narrow hole in the wall behind a door"; the kids are forced to stand in a drippy pipe with jagged edges, and the walls have broken glass and nails sticking out. Miss Trunchbull then proceeds to throw a young girl over a fence by her pigtails, but she lands safely on the other side. To Matilda's relief, her teacher, Miss Jennifer Honey, is quite the opposite; a kind and caring woman with a dark secret that will come to light over time. On her first day, Matilda displays her remarkable intelligence by getting a big sum right (13 x 379 = 4,927). Miss Honey is amazed by Matilda's knowledge, but when she suggests to Miss Trunchbull that Matilda be moved into an older class, Miss Trunchbull refuses. Also, when she visits the Wormwoods, she is dismayed by Harry and Zinnia's lack of respect for education.
One day, Miss Trunchbull discovers that the car Matilda's father sold her is a useless hunk of junk, and she takes her anger out on Matilda by locking her in the chokey. When Miss Honey notices Matilda's desk empty, she asks Matilda's friend, Lavender, where she is. Lavender makes a choking gesture, and Miss Honey goes to Miss Trunchbull's office and lets Matilda out. Later, Miss Honey takes Matilda to her place. On the way, they pass Miss Trunchbull's home, and Matilda notices a swing in the front yard. Miss Honey then starts to tell her a story of a young girl who lost both her parents by the time she was five. In between the two tragedies, the father invited the mother's step-sister to come live with them. When Miss Honey tells her the girls aunt was a mean person, Matilda realizes Miss Honey is talking about Miss Trunchbull. The girls father died soon afterwards, a suspected suicide. Miss Honey's story did have a happy ending as the girl rented a small cottage and finally escaped from her tyrannical aunt. Matilda recognizes Miss Honey's house as the cottage from her story, and realises that the girl in Miss Honey's story is Miss Honey herself, and Miss Honey's dark secret is now out: She is Miss Trunchbull's niece.
Inside, Miss Honey explains she was forced to leave all her dearest possessions behind when she left her aunt's home, including a doll her mother gave her. Later, on the way back, they watch Miss Trunchbull loading a shot put, hammer throw, and a javelin into the trunk of her car. They also watch her panic as a black cat advances towards her. Matilda is surprised that Miss Trunchbull is afraid of a cat, but Miss Honey tells Matilda her aunt is very superstitious, so only black ones scare her. While Miss Trunchbull is gone, they sneak into the house. Above the fireplace, where a portrait of Miss Honey's father had once hung was a portrait of Miss Trunchbull holding a javelin. Miss Honey next tells Matilda that her father used to cut a chocolate in half, and he would always give her the bigger half, but after he died, Miss Trunchbull would count them so she could not sneak one. They then head upstairs to Miss Honey's room where they find the portrait of Miss Honey's father and Miss Honey's doll. As Miss Honey goes to grab it, the Trunchbull's voice rings out; she is threatening Matilda's father with a lawsuit over the phone. She suddenly notices the lid on the chocolate box is not on straight, and she goes on the rampage to find the intruders. Matilda and Miss Honey barely manage to get away from the raging Trunchbull.
Around this time, Matilda learns that she has magical powers, a gift she can use to turn the tables on all the wicked grown-ups in her life - earlier in the movie, she accidentally blew up a television that her father had stolen, and caused a glass of water containing a newt to tip over, and the newt crawled over Miss Trunchbull, and she did both by using her mind. Once she learns to control her powers, Matilda decides to use them to teach Miss Trunchbull a lesson.
On a windy night, Matilda goes to Miss Trunchbull's house where she uses her powers to get Miss Honey's doll, then takes two chocolates from the chocolate box before eating one. Matilda then makes the power cables shake, causing the lights to flicker, and she makes the windows fly open. She then rips Miss Trunchbull's portrait off the wall, and throws it in the fire, replacing it with that of Miss Honey's father before moving the hands of Miss Trunchbull's clock to twelve o'clock. Now convinced her house is haunted, a terrified Miss Trunchbull runs out of the house and to her car.
At school the next day, Matilda gives Miss Honey her doll and the other chocolate. Miss Trunchbull arrives, and tells Miss Honey she will be teaching her class. However, Matilda concocts plan, and after showing Miss Honey her powers, she says "No more Miss Nice Girl". Coming in, Miss Trunchbull holds up Matilda's red hair ribbon which Matilda lost the night before, then throws it to the floor and spits. Miss Honey tries to defend Matilda, but ends up revealing her secret to the whole class by calling Miss Trunchbull "Aunt Trunchbull". Matilda then puts her plan into action; using her powers to levitate a piece of chalk, she writes a ghostly message supposedly from Miss Honey's father on the blackboard, warning Miss Trunchbull to get out of town, or he will get her like she got him. Matilda then makes two erasers attack Miss Trunchbull. Once she recovers, she throws a boy out the window, but Matilda causes him to fly back in, and her sends Miss Trunchbull crashing into a globe which Matilda magically spins around before Miss Trunchbull is sent flying off into the corner. She next charges towards Lavender, but she crashes through the door after Matilda raises her off the floor. The rest of the children in the school grab their lunchboxes, and pelt Miss Trunchbull with the contents, chasing her out of the school. She quickly gets in her car and drives off, and is never heard from again.
The Wormwood's are forced to flee the country when the law catches onto Harry's dodgy dealings, but allow Matilda to stay with Miss Honey - who has now moved back into her fathers house - after signing some adoption papers, the first decent thing Harry and Zinnia had ever done for their daughter, and Miss Honey is made principal of Crunchem Hall.
[edit] Main Cast
- Matilda Wormwood - Mara Wilson
- Harry Wormwood - Danny DeVito
- Zinnia Wormwood - Rhea Perlman
- Jennifer Honey - Embeth Davidtz
- Agatha Trunchbull - Pam Ferris
- Michael Wormwood - Brian Levinson
[edit] Production
Jon Lovitz makes a cameo appearance as the host of the fictitious game show, Million Dollar Sticky. The picture of Miss Honey's father, Magnus, is actually a portrait of Roald Dahl, the author of the book upon which the film is based. Miss Honey tells Matilda that as a child Miss Honey had a doll named Liccy Doll. One of the producers of the film is author Roald Dahl's widow, Liccy Dahl. One of the lunchboxes reads, "Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey", a reference to Danny DeVito's hometown; "Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey" is also the name of Bruce Springsteen's first album, and the name of the late professional wrestler Bam Bam Bigelow's finisher. In both the book and film Matilda reveals her fondness for Charles Dickens, however, in the film, when revealing this to Miss Honey, she accidentally refers to him as "Darles Chickens" - an obvious nod to the Big Friendly Giant's mispronunciation of the same author in The BFG. Near the end of the film, Matilda tells Miss Honey that the heart of a mouse beats at the rate of 650 times a minute - a reference to another book of Dahl's, "The Witches". Rachel Snow appears as an extra in this film, she can be seen briefly in some scenes. Pam Ferris would often stay in character when the director called cut in an attempt to actually scare the children on set so that their fear would be genuine when the camera was rolling. In the beginning, after Matilda asks to go to school, one of the books on her bedroom floor is The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.
At the end of the film, in the credits, it says the film is for Susie Wilson, Mara Wilson's mother, who died during the filming for Matilda.
[edit] Differences From the Book
The film version is arguably more active and visually impressive than the book. Some plot points are shortened or removed, while new details and action sequences are added. Miss Honey's poverty is not addressed; she lives fairly comfortably in her small cottage and is not mentioned to be paying money to Trunchbull, though the way she is dominated by her aunt at school suggests some kind of indentured servitude. In the film, Matilda is locked in The Chokey while the device is described in the book, and the Trunchbull's mansion undergoes two expeditions with their share of narrow escapes. Appropriately, the book goes into much greater detail about the benefits of books and even gives a list of the classical works Matilda reads. It also shows how advanced Matilda is, representing her as an excellent cook.
The film is modernised and Americanised as a retelling: for instance, it takes place in the United States instead of the United Kingdom, Lavender is African-American (only being described as a "skinny little nymph" in the book), and a boy is thrown out the window for eating M&M's in a literature class instead of Liquorice Allsorts during a Bible study class.
Smaller changes are those of ages, TV programmes and the like, and Matilda's brother is turned from a more-or-less ordinary boy to a bullying, fat idiot after his father, while their mother shows some humanity by giving her daughter away because she's better suited for a life with Miss Honey - but "some" only compared to the book, where both parents drop their daughter like a rock. Trunchbull's violence to children is also slightly mitigated. When Miss Trunchbull hurls a pigtailed girl over the fence, the girl lands safely gathering flowers for class, thanks to Matilda's powers. In the book version, she lands flat on her face and is hurt.
The most significant divergence is that Matilda's powers are treated more as a conventional superpower and less as a miracle. The film and book both have her start by inadvertent, tiny movements (an exploding cathode ray tube aside), but in the film Matilda eventually goes on to lift and control child-sized objects, and to throw multiple small ones around at will which is unlike the book where it takes much more practice and thought before she can master her powers. The final confrontation with Trunchbull turns into a match of overt physical force versus mental powers, powers she retains to use for trivialities. In contrast, characters in the book never lose their sense of awe and a degree of fear about dealing with forces larger than human. In the book, Matilda's triumph is moving a piece of chalk well enough to write a few dozen words, at the cost of considerable drain to herself, and she loses her abilities afterward while in the film it is suggested that although she doesn't need her powers as much, they will always be with her as she moves a book with her powers. The characters' working theory is that her mental capacity is now being expended in her schooling.
[edit] Music
Only two songs were featured in the movie. One of them, Send Me On My Way, was played twice: when 4 1/2-year old Matilda was left alone at her house, making pancakes, and at the end of the film, set to a montage of Matilda and Miss Honey playing at Miss Trunchbull's former house.
- Send Me On My Way - Rusted Root
- Little Bitty Pretty One - Bobby Darin
[edit] External links
