Film Review — Matilda: The Musical
The stage musical of Roald Dahl’s classic novel gets an enjoyable screen adaptation
I have great fondness for Roald Dahl’s late-career masterpiece Matilda; not just the novel, but also Danny DeVito’s earlier, US-set non-musical screen version from 1996. I took my younger brothers to see it at the cinema, and they also loved it. It has since been turned into a hugely successful stage musical by Dennis Kelly, and that musical has now been adapted for the big screen by director Matthew Warchus. How does it measure up?
Rather well, as it turns out. In Warchus’s take, the action has been returned to England, but the plot is basically the same, plus some terrific musical numbers. For the uninitiated, the eponymous Matilda (Alisha Weir) is born to obnoxious, stupid parents Mr and Mrs Wormwood (Andrea Riseborough and Stephen Graham). In a hilarious opening sequence, Mrs Wormwood refuses to acknowledge she is pregnant even as her contractions take place, and Mr Wormwood can’t get his head around the fact that he’s had a daughter rather than a son. He keeps calling Matilda “boy” in a running gag.
Suffice it to say, Matilda is not a chip off the old block. She’s bullied and mistreated by her ghastly parents, but she’s hugely intelligent, loves books (somehow managing to read Crime and…
