This magical Matilda is pitch perfect… even Roald Dahl would be delighted: BRIAN VINER’s five-star review of Matilda The Musical
MATILDA THE MUSICAL
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Nobody knew better than Roald Dahl that his genius for storytelling did not always transfer to the silver screen, even if he was pretty much alone in hating the 1971 film Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.
Inspired by his novel Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the movie he thought irredeemably ‘crummy’ has become a much-loved classic.
And now Matilda The Musical fully deserves to join it in the pantheon of great children’s films. I’m sticking my neck out, but I reckon it would even have delighted the notoriously dyspeptic, hard-to-please Dahl himself.
Last night’s world premiere was also the curtain-raiser to this year’s London Film Festival, and rarely has the LFF got off to such an exhilarating start.
Matilda The Musical is a joy from beginning to end, exquisitely written, acted and choreographed, and an early indication that the streaming giant Netflix did not overpay last year when it forked out an eye-popping $500million (£440million) for Dahl’s back catalogue. The film was adapted from the monumental West End and Broadway hit, but that isn’t always a recipe for success on screen either.
Last night’s world premiere was also the curtain-raiser to this year’s London Film Festival, and rarely has the LFF got off to such an exhilarating start, writes Brian Viner. Pictured: Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull in new Matilda the Musical
Matilda The Musical is a joy from beginning to end, exquisitely written, acted and choreographed, and an early indication that the streaming giant Netflix did not overpay last year when it forked out an eye-popping $500million (£440million) for Dahl’s back catalogue. Pictured: Emma Thompson and Alisha Weir at the premiere
Moreover, director Matthew Warchus is the man who adapted Dahl’s novel for the stage in the first place, and the words, music and lyrics are by original writers Dennis Kelly and Tim Minchin, so there might easily have been a constraining theatrical feel to the enterprise.
Instead, Warchus uses the camera to give the story, about a girl prodigy who uses telekinetic powers to outsmart an evil headmistress, a whole new energy. It works gloriously on screen.
Helpfully, all the children are splendid and little Alisha Weir, the Irish newcomer in the title role, is a real find. She is terrific, and moreover looks exactly right.
Matilda mustn’t be too winsome. For all her goodness, she has a proper devilish streak. Young Alisha captures that perfectly.
Imagine being only 13 years old and not being remotely upstaged by Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough, both an absolute hoot as Matilda’s appalling, boorish parents, or even by the great dame herself, Emma Thompson.
With broken veins, discoloured teeth, a hairy chin, shelf-like bosom and enormous black bovver boots, Thompson plays the monstrous head, Agatha Trunchbull, as a kind of (vaguely) female Benito Mussolini, strutting around her empire striking fear into the hearts of everyone who dares meet her dreadful glare – except Matilda. It is one of the great scene-stealing roles (played in the 1996 non-musical film version by Pam Ferris) and is rumoured to have been offered first to Ralph Fiennes.
But Thompson, as you might expect, grabs the opportunity every bit as firmly as Miss Trunchbull, the English hammer-throwing champion of 1959, once held the hammer.
The role of Miss Honey, the loving, sympathetic teacher who persuades Matilda’s awful parents to let her go to school, is in some ways a harder character to play convincingly, but Lashana Lynch, a Bond girl in last year’s No Time To Die, does a grand job. Are we allowed even to say ‘Bond girl’ any more, by the way?
Three cheers to everyone involved, but perhaps above all to Roald Dahl, who in dreaming all this up, gave other amazingly creative people the chance to build on his mighty legacy. Pictured: Emma Thompson, husband Greg and daughter Gaia at the premiere
It is tricky to pick a favourite song or favourite scene; they are all so witty, so pleasing on the ear and the eye, with occasional echoes of another wonderful film musical, Carol Reed’s Oliver! (1968). But if I had to choose, it would be Miss Trunchbull’s demonic spelling test, followed by her crypto-fascist anthem, The Smell Of Rebellion.
Three cheers to everyone involved, but perhaps above all to Roald Dahl, who in dreaming all this up, gave other amazingly creative people the chance to build on his mighty legacy.
Matilda The Musical opens in cinemas on November 25, and on Netflix in December.
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