It seems like every big entertainment corporation is permanently on the look-out for the next big property to systematically exploit – not that it hasn’t always been thus, but these days it all seems a lot more premeditated in terms of the branding and forward-planning and so on. Next recipient of this treatment looks likely to be the writer Roald Dahl. To be fair, Dahl’s work has been the subject of numerous adaptations for decades – Walt Disney nearly made a film of his early novel The Gremlins (a word he apparently did a lot to popularise), since when there have been dozens of movies and TV shows. I get the sense the next wave will be a bit more organised and irresistible – or perhaps I’m just reading too much into the fact that The Roald Dahl Story company now has its own animated logo. (I look forward to seeing this at the start of a possible future adaptation of My Uncle Oswald, a quasi-pornographic Dahl novel from 1979 concerning an enterprising scheme to harvest the semen of famous men using an infallible aphrodisiac and some open-minded accomplices.)
This December will see the release of the surely infelicitiously-titled Wonka, a probably inevitable prequel to the films based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but still providing a cheerful and upbeat presence in UK cinemas is the new version of Matilda, directed by Matthew Warchus. (Strictly speaking, this film is trading under the title of Roald Dahl’s Matilda: the Musical, but, you know, who can be bothered? We all know what I’m talking about.)
This is the tale of Matilda Wormwood (Alisha Weir), whose arrival in the world happens during the opening number: in contrast to the joy experienced by most of the parents in the maternity ward, Matilda’s are filled with profound horror – her father (Stephen Graham) would prefer a boy, while her mother (Andrea Riseborough) would have preferred not have a child at all, the mere fact she is about to give birth being a profound shock to her. This utter disdain extends into Matilda’s childhood, when she is forced to sleep in the attic and generally neglected, her parents even forgetting to send her to school.
The local school board take a dim view of this sort of thing and Matilda ends up being sent to Crunchem Hall, a grim establishment overseen by the imposing figure of Agatha Trunchbull (Emma Thompson), a former champion hammer-thrower whose idea of encouragement is a slogan like ‘None of you are special’ and whose personal motto is ‘Children are maggots’. Matilda, however, has – from somewhere or other – acquired a passionate love of reading and sense of justice, and before long she finds herself heading for a collision with the headmistress. Perhaps the psychic powers she seems to be spontaneously manifesting will come in useful…?
‘It’s a bit like Carrie,’ was how I pitched Matilda to the co-spousal unit when we were thinking about going to see it, a description which I obviously still stand by: young girl from a troubled domestic situation has a hard time at school and takes her telekinetic revenge in the final act. There, of course, the similarities start to dry up, for Roald Dahl and Stephen King, despite their shared success, don’t really have that much in common as stylists. King is always grounding things in the mundane world, while Dahl is revelling gleefully in the grotesque details which have made his books so abidingly popular – it’s an over-the-top, cartoony sort of world his characters generally inhabit.
Of course, this has led to accusations of misogyny, anti-semitism and racism being levelled at his books, but the only one which has an outside chance of sticking to Matilda is the first – Trunchbull is a hideous monster rather than anything recognisable as an actual woman, while Mrs Wormwood is a shrill, parasitic shrew. It must be said that Emma Thompson and Andrea Riseborough nevertheless lean into the repulsive elements of their characters and clearly seem to be having a great time doing so. They’re so awful it’s impossible to think the film is trying to make a serious point, any more than an adaptation of Hansel and Gretel or Snow White.
If the film does have a message it’s an entirely laudable one – not just about not being horrible to other people, but about standing up for fairness and justice (and, seeing as we’re mentioning these things, the joys of reading, telling stories, and being educated generally). The film manages this in a non-preachy, entirely persuasive way I found wholly admirable; the fact the film is consistently funny and poignant in the right places doesn’t do it any harm either.
I suspect the main reason I went to see Matilda was because, as the lengthy full title suggests, it’s a musical, and I do like a musical even if it’s a kids’ film. The songs are by Tim Minchin, as I expect is quite well known, and they are uniformly both clever and witty. We went to a singalong showing of the film, something I’m usually wary of doing, but luckily no-one seemed inclined to join in at our screening. The subtitles were actually quite welcome as they helped us to appreciate the finer points of the jokes in the lyrics which might otherwise have got lost. Emma Thompson sings a song about how to be a champion hammer-thrower, which isn’t something you’re going to get in many films, while the terrific ‘Revolting Children’ number is as agreeable an incitement to riot as you’re likely to hear all year. Great singing performances all round, from Weir, Thompson, and Lashana Lynch (who plays a friendly schoolteacher).
I didn’t see the last Chocolate Factory adaptation and the prospect of Timothee Chalamet in a top hat practicing to become Johnny Depp fills me with inertia – in fact it’s probably fair to say I’ve enjoyed Dahl’s work for adults more than his children’s stories (too many Tales of the Unexpected at a tender age, I expect). Nevertheless I had a really good time watching Matilda – the sad bits are really sad, but this is part of the process of earning a proper happy ending, and the funny and uplifting bits do exactly what they need to do. This is a thoroughly enjoyable and well-made film that, I suspect, the whole family can sit down and have a good time with.