Movie Reviews from
By John Ruch
© 1996 CM Media, Inc.
Matilda (1996)
There’s something essentially paradoxical to a movie that tells you books are good. If the filmmakers were true to the notion, wouldn’t they just stop the film and suggest you go read something instead?
It’s nigh
impossible for a
It doesn’t work in “Matilda,” either, a comic fantasy about a brainy, telekinetic girl that basically amounts to “Phenomenon” in the classroom.
The idea is that Matilda (played intelligently by Mara Wilson) is a child genius, but whose white-trash parents (Danny DeVito, who also directs, and Rhea Perlman) won’t let her read books and ridicule her brains.
When Matilda’s dad prevents her from reading “Moby-Dick,” we’re asked to sympathize with her. Not with her desire to read “Moby-Dick”—like most any movie that addresses such topics, this film is terrified to suggest that you too could read a hefty book.
No, your escape hatch lies in merely sympathizing with her alienation. We’re told explicitly that the message Matilda gets from all her reading is: “You are not alone.” It’s warm, it’s cuddly…and it’s easier that way.
For all the pro-intellect rhetoric, this movie is designed to appeal to people who think like the parents, not like Matilda. In three major ways, the film abdicates its responsibility to get your brain working, ending up anti-intellectual in its very process.
First, it uses extensive voice-over narration to tell you exactly what’s happening and what it means. (Delivered, oddly enough, by the voice of the evil father, who eventually disappears from the narrative.)
Second, it uses scenes set to pop songs, complete with lyrics, that again tell you precisely what to think and feel. One of these, a breakfast scene, is little more than a mini-commercial for Cheerios.
Third, it uses stereotypes, the foremost being that Matilda’s mental powers soon become supernatural. This subscribes to ancient superstition about people with smarts—basically, they’re witches. That thinking, in this modern form, leads to precisely the sort of anti-intellectual viciousness displayed by the parents.
Insult to
injury: It’s based on a book! (By current
As for “Moby-Dick,” I read it a few months ago. Now, I can’t blow up TVs or slam doors with my mental powers. I just picked up the friggin’ book, read it, enjoyed it and learned from it. Contrast with this film, which simply got me 90 minutes closer to being dead while my latest read rotted on the seat arm next to me.
In sheer cinematic terms, the film is like John Waters watered down, a broad satire of nothing in particular (except, ultimately, itself). Wouldn’t you like to use your brain to do more than giggle at Danny DeVito’s bad ties?
Like Dahl’s book, the film is done from a child’s point of view—surreal, exaggerated, brimming with fantasy wish-fulfillment. Which actually digs close to the root of supernatural thinking, come to think of it.
The result is a whole lot of slapstick—yes, somebody does get dessert pastry on the face—and various special effects to serve as a stretcher on which to lay the sickly script.
One nice surprise is British actor Pam Ferris, making her American film debut as the most sadistic high school principal this side of “The Wall.” Just might be hearing her name come Oscar time. (Ooh, jinxed her!)
So what do
you want me to do? Tell you to go read a book instead? Hey, at least you’re
reading this.