Emma Thompson Goes Big and Bad in Brashly Entertaining Netflix Adaptation of “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical”

The supporting ensemble of this movie adaptation of the stage musical, which had its world premiere at the London Film Festival, also includes Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, and Andrea Riseborough. Alisha Weir plays the title character.

 

The story of Matilda has persisted in a variety of versions with tweaks and alterations, much like The Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan, first as a very English novel for young readers, then as an Americanized movie, and finally as a stage musical that is now a film adaptation of that stage musical.

 

The chatty-catty narration of Roald Dahl’s 1988 book, which tells the tale of the super-smart titular girl who defies her antiquated parents to become a reader and faces off against bullying headmistress Miss Trunchbull, frequently makes snarky asides, constantly veers off in peculiar directions, and is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. But it’s also packed with atrocities and blatant cruelty committed against children by grownups, like dragging youngsters about by their hair and putting them in iron maiden-style punishment containers. Although the heroine occasionally strikes back at grownups, she also uses telekinetic abilities that, while not as terrifying as Carrie, are nevertheless frightful enough to frighten grown headmistresses, such supergluing a hat to her absent-minded father’s head.

 

The plot would involve social workers and accusations of child abuse if it weren’t for the world of whimsy, chocolate cake, and miraculous kids who can read Jane Austen and William Faulkner before entering kindergarten. To put it more precisely, it’s not that people now are less tolerant of child abuse than they were a decade ago in our society. The jocularity of Matilda is somewhat problematic now, as they say, since we regulate portrayals of it with much greater rigour.

 

The team behind the current stage musical’s film adaptation is helmed by director Matthew Warchus (Pride), who also directed the stage production’s original production for the Royal Shakespeare Company, which debuted in 2010. This presents some unique tonal issues for the team. The team manages to hit the majority of the right notes with this cheerful, unusual adaptation thanks to help from Dennis Kelly, the author of the show’s book, on the screenplay, music by composer and lyricist Tim Minchin, a rich production budget, and brilliant casting. Or perhaps the movie contains just the appropriate amount of flashy things and perfectly timed chorus lines of dancing children to make no one care about all that terrible stuff. In any case, it largely functions.

 

Those who are familiar with the subject matter will recognise that Warchus and Co.’s theatrical production varied slightly from Dahl’s original. It eliminated characters like Matilda’s brother and the school’s deputy headmaster and added the scene in which Matilda tells her friend Mrs. Phelps, the librarian, the tale of an escapologist and an acrobat, which turns out to be significant later. In light of the fact that the play deviated slightly from the book, the movie adaptation of the show barely differs from the stage version other than the removal of a few songs and the reduction of the running time to 117 minutes.

 

Likewise, substituting actual sites like the enormous stately estate Bramshill House for Matilda’s school Crunchem Hall forces the movie to take on a more realistic tone. Similar remarks apply to the substitution of visual effects for the show’s successful utilisation of traditional wire and lighting feats.

 

All of that doesn’t necessarily make the final result worse or better, but it does make it unique. Warchus has been shrewd about casting and how broad he’s let the ensemble to get with the inherently ridiculous material. Irish moppet Alisha Weir, who was still in her tweens at the time this was shot, plays the lead part and carries the picture with her unstoppable energy. She portrays a righteous outrage at the injustices happening around her that is sympathetic but still vulnerable.

 

The performances find a careful balance between comic broadness and cinematic nuance, and the “big” performers in the cast aren’t so well-known that they eclipse Weir. In this regard, Emma Thompson provides a master class in needle-threading while still covered in a thick layer of hideous latex (bringing back happy memories of her Nanny McPhee franchise). With this and her performance in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Thompson is having a great year. She even manages to give Miss Trunchbull, the movie’s main antagonist, a tiny bit of humanity. This is especially true of her dulcet rendition of the song “Hammer,” in which Trunchbull boasts about her sporting victory in hammer-throwing and her ability to adhere rigidly to the rules of the sport. And you don’t need happiness or self-esteem to make the team, she trills.

 

Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough are perfectly cast as Matilda’s vulgar, TV-watching, and ballroom-dancing parents. Riseborough is particularly funny in the first scene when she refuses to acknowledge that she is pregnant even as the contractions begin. Rob Howell’s gloriously garish costumes and Sharon Martin’s hair and makeup complement the production design’s hot, sunny pastel colour scheme.

 

The performance of Lashana Lynch as the gentle teacher Miss Honey—all but the only adult, aside from Sindhu Vee’s Mrs. Phelps—that treats Matilda with any kindness is perhaps the most unexpected. Lynch played the newest agent to wear the 007 designation in the final Bond movie, No Time to Die, which was seen by millions of people, but the controversy surrounding Lynch’s casting as a Black woman nearly completely overshadowed her performance. Her performances in The Woman King and, for a little period earlier in 2022, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness could help her have a successful year as well. Here, she has the opportunity to display a much gentler side as the kind of kind-hearted teacher every lonely smart youngster loved in elementary school. She can also display her impressive vocal range in her large solo for “My House.”

 

The huge, show-stopping pieces like “School Song” and “Revolting Children,” in which the ensemble of meticulously rehearsed kids get to strut their thing, are where Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical really makes its bones. They are the most intimidating group of schoolchildren to appear since Malcolm McDowell burned down the academy in If, frequently gazing and singing directly at the camera, which appears to recoil in retreat from their onslaught (1968). They are problem-solvers, not troublesome.