See the world from a kid’s-eye view with Matilda, a modern fairytale that mixes hilarious humor with the magical message of love. Mrs. Doubtfire’s Mara Wilson stars as Matilda, a super-smart little girl who’s woefully misunderstood by her parents (Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman), her brother, and an evil school principal. But with the help of a brave best friend and a wonderful teacher, Matilda discovers she doesn’t have to get mad to get even.Danny DeVito’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl book for children is mostly just fine, helped along quite a bit by the charming performance of Mara Wilson (Mrs. Doubtfire) as young Matilda, a brilliant girl neglected by her stupid, self-involved parents (DeVito and Rhea Perlman). Ignored at home, Matilda escapes into a world of reading, exercising her mind so much she develops telekinetic powers. Good thing, too: sent off to a school headed by a cruel principal, Matilda needs all the help she can get. DeVito takes a highly stylized approach that is sometimes reminiscent of Barry Sonnenfeld (director of Get Shorty, a DeVito production), and his judgment is not the best in some matters, such as letting the comic-scary sequences involving the principal go on too long. But much of the film is delightful and funny. –Tom Keogh
April 19, 2008
#1
Is this really a movie for children? I don’t know.
The school principal throws a boy out the window and it’s a comedy. Pretty scary for kids who suffer abuse.
Towards the end of the movie the kids pelt the principal with paint and other school supplies to drive her away. True, she’s an ogre, but whatever happened to non-violent ways of getting rid of nasty folks?
Then the lead girl asks her parents to give her up for adoption, which they do with nary a hesitation. Yikes-a-doodle.
As with most Hollywood flicks, this one is short on character development, semi-long on plot, and super long on technical gizmos. It appears to be “liberal” but with such small-mindedness it’s not very open at all. And the main characters are exclusively white, while Black kids sit in the back of the bus.
Choose “The Story of the Weeping Camel” instead.
April 20, 2008
#2
The best that can be said is that it’s a faithful albeit Americanized version of Dahl’s book.
Slapstick violence, dark authoritarian cruelty and familial abuse, petty revenge, high suspense; I can see why Mr. DeVito took this one on, because this movie, like his other films, curses the darkness (even as it endorses it by exhibition) instead of praising the light.
As fodder for children under, say 25 years old, it’s way out of line, with nothing to redeem it. Even Dahl’s message of “salvation” through classic literature is all but lost here. And the telekinetic shtick always was a cop-out.
I’d buy the Madeline DVD/VHS instead – it is a REAL girl-positive movie, and stands up well to repeated viewings.
April 20, 2008
#3
I saw this movie last night and I must say it is a sad movie so I recomend to all you folks out there not to watch it before you go to bed or any time else for that matter and if you do watch something funny afterwards and thats exactly what I did!
April 20, 2008
#4
I know for a fact that Roahl Dahl’s children’s books tell everyone about his personal life. For instance, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” showed him that chocolate is his favorite candy. And “Matilda” shows everyone that the author had a very mean teacher. Yeah, I had some bad teachers before. This movie can sadly remind me of them, but guess what, this stuff is make believe.
I read the book when I was about eight years old, and I have to say it’s more appropriate for an 11 year old. It’s not to say that the book is terrible, neither is the movie, but it’s not approrpiate for young children. No offense Roahl, except for “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” I don’t think any of your books are appropriate for 8-year-olds.
“Matilda” tells the story of a miserable girl, named Matilda. She is neglected by her parents and her older brother. Her father is a jerk who works in a car salesman. Her mother just doesn’t care for her. Her parents never wanted to let her go to school. Instead, they had her stay at home doing their type of work. So therefore, Matilda works for them instead. She decides to borrow books from the library.
Until one day, her father finds a sick, mentally, physically, rejected, overabused principal, named Ms. Trunchbull. This decides to put Matilda’s father in the place where he wants to send his daughter to Ms. Trunchbull’s school. Matilda finds ways to get rid of Ms. Trunchbull creatively and to stay away from her family.
Now, I’m not going to right ahead to say that “Matilda” is a terrible movie. It actually is pretty decent. But compared to other films like the “Harry Potter” series, which can also be depressing and torturous. Unfortunately, “Matilda” has more problems than that to face to with younger children. It even had more terrible problems to face with than “Bridge to Terabithia” did.
Say, if you took your kids to a terrible school or a school that was not right for them. That is not the right thing to do. This movie sends in this message. No one should ever feel abused, neglected, rejected etc. to family, friends, or even teachers. If friends want to do this to others like this movie behavior, then I suggest they go @$!% off. And you can have the right to tell them that. If teacher or a principal wants to be a stupid jerk to you and your parents don’t believe you, you can go call 911 right away. If this movie teaches you any horrible problems like throwing kids out of the building, hurting their feelings, playing mean, nasty crap like this, fine, be aggressive and get the thing you want most. Run away. Call 911. Like I’m saying this movie does not give a good message to children. And trying to neglect your kids, parents, would you want to neglect your kids, because you don’t like them? Bottom line is you’re suppose to like your kids. Not that. You’re suppose to LOVE them no matter what.
Overall, “Matilda” is very harsh for your kids. Parents should know what they should be getting into before letting their kids watch this movie. If you want a better movie for your five year old, yeah it can deal with some heavy issues, but at least much more appropriate, even though it lacks the youngest theme for a G-rated film, you should watch “Ratatouille.” Yeah, a rat gets separated from his family after close to getting shot by an old lady, but at least, he helped a terrible cook become a much better cook than before.
April 20, 2008
#5
Matilda is an unwanted, mostly neglected child. Her father is a disreputible used car salesman and her mother is a self-absorbed Bingo player. Her parents obviously have taught her how to read, and they feed her – but they are otherwise pretty indifferent to her and refuse to acknowledge her intellegence.
Children who grow up without any affirmation, love or physical contact do not grow up to be well-mannered, well-rounded functional people – yet Matilda apparently rises above those statistics by having an idiot-savant like ability with math and an insatiable hunger for reading.
Her parents refuse to let her go to school because she must stay at home to sign for packages of stolen car parts her father gets for his business. Defiant, she slips away to the library to escape into the world of literature.
Her father finally sends her to school when one of his customers, Principal Trunchbull, brags about her school in which children are treated like the garbage that they are. That’s a nice message to send to children, isn’t it?
Trunchbull (Pam Ferris) is a chunky, javelin throwing, sadistic nut. She has a faint mustache and is the obvious major antagonist of the story.
The principal has a tiny closet with protruding nails she calls “The Chokie” which she gleefully places children as she sees fit. For this element alone, nobody should expose their children to a film like this.
Beyond this horrific torture chamber, there is a strong suggestion that Trunchbull, who is the aunt of Matilda’s beloved teacher, Miss Honey, likely murdered her own brother (Miss Honey’s father) so she could have his money and his home. She is so evil, she even keeps photos of Honey’s father and her childhood toys and dolls in a locker in the house and won’t let her have them.
She is not a sympathetic character in any way – she truly displays pleasure in throwing darts at photos of children, throwing children out of the school windows and picking up a child by her braided pigtails and swinging her around like a shotput. She doesn’t even like animals. She is truly loathesome and feels threatened by Matilda’s obvious super-intelligence.
For an unexplained reason, Matilda has a telekinetic ability and learns to concentrate her “powers” to retrieve Miss Honey’s beloved objects and to terrorize the Trunchbull.
This film scares children – it tells children that they can be abused by teachers or other authority figures and shouldn’t bother to tell their parents or the police, because no one will believe them. Their only hope is to hope that they can develop some sort of pscyho-kinetic power or cast a spell to make their conditions less wretched.
Is this the message we want to send to children? I did not read the book, so I cannot compare the book to the film – but I can tell you that the film is wretched and not entertaining in the slightest. Even though Matilda and the children finally triumph over the Trunchbull, the damage to a child’s psyche has already been done. The underlying message is – if someone perpetrates evil upon you, don’t tell your parents or the police, but instead use resources at your disposal to seek revenge.
Mara Wilson does a good job at the unusually confident, extroverted Matilda, but all the good acting in the world would not make this a film worth watching – especially for children.