Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical Parent Guide

The birth of a first child is a pivotal event – except for Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough). Although Matilda (Alisha Weir) is an uncommonly bright and conscientious child, her parents would rather she disappeared altogether.

Matilda is more than just clever – she’s a genius. Having taught herself to read, she spends her lonely days perusing everything from Charles Dickens to Fyodor Dostoevsky. Once she goes off to school, though, Mr. Wormwood has every confidence that the headmistress, Ms. Trunchbull (Emma Thompson), will make sure Matilda is as miserable as possible. The Trunchbull, as she’s known by the student body, is a massive, domineering woman with all the charm of a prison warden and half the kindness. In contrast, Matilda’s teacher, Ms. Honey (Lashana Lynch) is a wonderful woman who wants nothing more than to nurture and support her students. Ms. Honey is blown away by Matilda’s advanced intellect and hopes to give her more advanced lessons. But the Trunchbull has other ideas…

I’m always wary of film adaptations of books, and doubly so when they’re musicals, so when I tell you that this movie is fun, that’s saying a lot. The adaptation is reasonably faithful to the novel, and the deviations from Dahl’s work are both interesting and tonally consistent. Even better, the music is fun. A lot of musicals feel blandly similar, but songwriter Tim Minchin did a great job with the soundtrack. In script and score alone, this movie defied all my expectations.

The feather in the film’s cap is the cast. The last time I saw Lashana Lynch was in The Woman King, and she spent most of her time in the movie screaming and stabbing people. Somehow, she is equally convincing as the softspoken Ms. Honey. And, if you can look past the extensive prosthetics, Emma Thompson is clearly having a little too much fun in her role as the villain of the piece, and it’s contagious. I even like the child actors, who manage to deliver their lines convincingly and learn some complex choreography.

This production is geared at kids, and the content reflects that with no sexual content and only minor profanity. Of course, since this is a Roald Dahl story, it shuns sugary sweetness, and some kids are faced with absolutely insane threats of violence. Chief among these is “The Chokey”, a sort of Iron Maiden the Trunchbull keeps around for discipline. (I’m not sure what mild content you expected here: Dahl had a kid put in a juicer in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.) But apart from that, parents have very little to worry about – for them or their offspring. Matilda the Musical is one of those rare kids’ films that adults are likely not only to tolerate but even enjoy. There weren’t any children in the theater I attended, and I still heard plenty of laughs.