At the same time, one of Matilda’s most appealing qualities is her allergy to self-pity, her calm insistence that every kid deserves, and can exact, a measure of justice.
A lot of its pleasures have happily made it to the screen intact, doubtless because its central creative trio - director Matthew Warchus, book writer Dennis Kelly and composer-lyricist Tim Minchin - have retained their equivalent roles behind the camera.Īnd beneath those pleasures is a potent underlay of feeling: As pastel hues fill the screen and perky melodies and wicked-smart lyrics flood the soundtrack, a tale of a child’s tragic neglect and deep longing comes into focus. Neither, to be sure, did the stage show, but it was also sufficiently fresh and transporting that it scarcely mattered.
The new movie, for all its charms, doesn’t achieve or encourage anywhere near the same buzzing pro-literacy excitement.
(The same logic surely applies to too much Netflix, where this bouncy, bright-colored adaptation will begin streaming Dec. It’s spawned a few adaptations already, including an entertaining if bluntly Americanized 1996 film and a justly popular Olivier- and Tony-winning musical that has now directly inspired this new movie.Īll that aside, there may be something inherently contradictory about any filmed version of “Matilda,” since the novel itself is something of a children’s cautionary tale about the perils of too much TV watching. More grounded and less outlandish than some of the author’s other juvenile fiction, Dahl’s 1988 novel tells of a child genius in a small English village who’s blessed with the kind of extraordinary brainpower that can change the world. I wasn’t alone I imagine “Matilda” was catnip for a lot of bookish kids with latent Anglophile tendencies and dreams of overthrowing their bullies and escaping humdrum reality.
“Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical” - an unwieldy title but a better one, surely, than “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical: The Movie” - is an enjoyably bright and chipper adaptation of a moving, melancholy story I’ve loved since childhood.
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