This is a story about the family you choose, versus the one you were born into. The triumph of Matilda, both as Dahl wrote it and as it’s interpreted here, is that one little girl finally finds her place among people who understand her.

Many feel, at one time or another, that they’ve been born into the wrong family, that they truly belong somewhere else. (The movie’s closing number is a clever riff on the idea of “revolting children.”) And as loathsome as some of Dahl’s personal views may have been, he did understand that children often have fears and anxieties they can’t easily admit to. The songs are jaunty and hummable, at least in the moment. who stepped up to help miners during the National Union of Mineworkers strike in 1984-keeps this new rendering moving at a clip. Warchus-director of the lively and sweet 2014 picture Pride, based on the true story of gay activists in the U.K. But Warchus’ version is more lavish and fanciful than the earlier movie, even as it preserves the spirit of the original story. The perceptive and gentle Miss Honey (played by the wonderful Lashana Lynch, recently seen as a take-no-prisoners warrior in The Woman King) takes Matilda under her wing, though even she’s dismayed when she learns that her student’s gifts go beyond mere braininess: Matilda can actually move objects just by staring at them, a gift one of her classmates refers to as “telekinipsis.”Īt this point you may be asking, Do we really need another Matilda, even a musical one? Danny DeVito’s delightful version, starring Mara Wilson, is only 26 years old-that’s either an eternity or the blink of an eye, depending on how old you were when you first saw it. And naturally, she takes an immediate dislike to the fearless, freethinking Matilda, though the girl does have one teacher who sees what’s special about her. Miss Trunchbull hates all children, viewing them as “maggots,” and takes sadistic pleasure in sentencing them to time in her personally designed prison known as the chokey.

When their neglect comes to light, they pack her off to a grim institution known as Crunchem Hall, run by former world-class hammer thrower and all-around miserable person Agatha Trunchbull ( Emma Thompson, wearing extra chin hairs and clearly having a blast playing a baddie). The Wormwoods are so preoccupied with their own lives that they’ve neglected to send Matilda to school.

Matilda netflix 2022