By Hayley Trowbridge

Want a feel good film to fight off those recession blues? Fancy humming along to a catchy soundtrack for days to come? Then stick Danny DeVito’s Matilda into your DVD player, sit back, relax, and wait for that warm feel good factor to wash over you.

Matilda, based on the children’s book of the same name written by Roald Dahl, tells the story of, well, Matilda, played by everyone’s favourite child star, Mara Wilson (absolutely adorable in Mrs Doubtfire). Matilda is a rather brainy six and half year old who lives with her two grotesque parents, Harry Wormwood (Danny De Vito) and Zinnia Wormwood (Rhea Perlman) and her even more gruesome older brother, Micheal Wormwood (Brian Levinson) in a rather nice suburban home. But apart from her humble abode, everything else in young Matilda’s life stinks; her family doesn’t understand her and her immense brainpower is wasting away. That is until she starts school and meets the wonderful Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz). At school Matilda’s talents are nourished but looming over her and the school is the terrifying shadow of ‘The Trunchbull’ (Pam Ferris). The Trunchbull has a tyrannous reign over the school and Miss Honey and to defeat ‘The Trunch’, Matilda must first unlock the secrets of the past and of her unique mind.

Primarily Matilda is a children’s comedy and a half decent one at that if you like a bit of a giggle a pieces of silliness that other self-respecting adults would vehemently turn their noses up at – which I of course do! With caricatures galore; Harry Wormwood – crooked, used card dealer, Zannia Wormwood – stay-at-home ageing desperate housewife, Miss Honey – sweet and caring primary school teacher, and who can forget The Trunchbull – a masculine female ex-sportswoman and otherwise brutal head teacher. If there is a stereotype not exploited by the film for the purposes of a cheap laugh then do please write in and let me know. Nevertheless these one-dimensional constructs work in this far-fetched, hyper-reality reworking of the sentiment of David and Goliath. Well, we do all love a true underdog story.

Whilst failing to capture the true, underbelly of darkness that lurks inside all of Dahl’s work, DeVito’s Matilda does bring out the essence of Dahl’s comic, tongue-in-cheek style well. The exaggerated characters, the whimsical narration, the heavily constructed and almost artificial sequences (Matilda discovering her powers and her ‘burglary’ of The Trunchbull’s house scenes in particular) do go some way to unearthing the wonders of Dahl’s book. But somehow manages to fall short. Perhaps its shortcomings are down to the films lack of ‘darkness’, I don’t know, but somehow the film loses a certain something found in Dahl’s writing. Something that just should not be lost.

Whatt is, however, captured in DeVito’s reworking of the tale is the quintessential aspect as to why I quite like this film is in its ability to make its viewer reminisce about their primary school days. DeVito captures the feeling of unworthy adults being in positions of authority and the solidarity that runs through the veins of primary school kids around the world in their united goal – to one day rule the school! Granted none of us ever actually had a head teacher as tyrannous as Agatha Trunchbull (although we all thought we did at the time) and never actually ever got to throw our lunches at our first-ever nemesis, but I think that any adult watching Matilda has to take some pleasure in vicariously feeling what it would have been like if an entire school took a stand against the establishment and revolted, en masse.

And there is Matilda’s essence – the little men standing together and defeating the undefeatable. Whoever would have thought there could be such political sentiment in a ‘kid’s’ story.

Rating 7.1

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