Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical

The inspirational musical tale of an extraordinary girl who discovers her superpower and summons the remarkable courage, against all odds, to help others change their stories, whilst also taking charge of her own destiny. Standing up for what's right, she's met with miraculous results.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Comedy, Family, Fantasy
  • Stars: Emma Thompson, Alisha Weir, Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Sindhu Vee, Charlie Hodson-Prior, Meesha Garbett, Rei Yamauchi Fulker, Winter Jarrett Glasspool, Andrei Shen, Ashton Robertson, Ray Strachan, Ray Strachan, Ray Strachan
  • Director: Matthew Warchus
 Comments
  • naroiden - 13 March 2024
    Finally a proper musical but a boring movie.
    The fundamental problem of musical genre is basically people start to sing and dance in doesn't makes sense way. In this movie people have good excuses to actually dance and sing and they managed to make it in a decent artistic way.

    Another problem of musicals is lyrics are somewhat not a proper song as well as the dance and the situation is not fitting which this musical has no such problem. Not to mention this musical doesn't suffer from a lack of proper melody and decent lyrics in songs as most of the musicals.

    However musical aspect of the movie is lacking as in short musical moments and lack of interesting dance sections were not satisfactory at all. For example the musical aspect of The Mask (1994) is way more satisfactory than this movie despite The Mask is not musical and you bet it tells a lot about Matilda: The Musical. Yet it's no where near to the great The Fiddler on the Roof movie but not as bad as The Phantom of The Opera.

    Not that the movie was short but the time it had wasn't used properly. For example the whole the escapologist and acrobat love story parts in the movie are too unnecessary. Instead there could've been more musical scenes. They sacrificed some Matilda musical sections just for the sake of this pointless side-story just to make a poor job by spending less money as much as possible. It would be welcome if this movie wasn't a musical or if these sections were actually a musical, not just singing for like 2 minutes in total.

    Compared to the original movie, there are certain changes of course. This Matilda is better in story progression but the original Matilda was more satisfactory about the ending, especially on the psychological torture of the Trunchbull. In that regard the part that leads to the ending and the ending part was too fast to happen. Otherwise fundamentals of both movies are the same.

    However in the original movie Matilda is a devilish person who can actually does more than an ordinary kid would do, in this musical Matilda is vindictive yet she is not devilish at all which despite her superpowers she stays as an ordinary innocent girl minus being too good at mathematics compared to her peers.

    Long story short, it's a proper musical that could be satisfying but not so good movie. Without such decent music it would be plainly boring.
  • emilianszymczak - 15 October 2023
    Awful adaptation of Matilda
    I dislike Matilda the musical, It ruined the original book by making it a terrible musical.

    I only like Musicals that are good, this isn't one of them. The songs in this musical make my ears bleed and make me want to go bungee jumping despite me being scared of height.

    If you want to watch an actual good adaptation of Matilda, watch the adaptation from 1998, it's more enjoyable that this dumpster fire of an Music adaptation.

    My biggest gripe with the Musical is the acting, not from the adults but from the kids. No offence to any of the kid actors but I dislike their performances because of how bad and cheesy the lines are.

    The only thing I liked about the adaptation are the costumes and the sets.
  • gpwdxrfv - 9 July 2023
    I didn't see any flow
    I saw Matilda The Musical in the theatre and it was really good, I enjoyed it. Also a big fan of the 90's film version so really looked forward to this.

    Sadly I just don't think it worked on the 'big screen' the story was broken up and where sequences in the theatre were cleverly done it just became a confusing cutaway that detracted from rather than added to the story.

    Even dance sequences that in theatre are expected and become a part of the story came across as a drama school assembly.

    I think perhaps if I hadn't seen this in theatre this film may have worked and I'd have enjoyed it, as it was I was expecting to be transported back to a London stage and I was disappointed that I wasn't.
  • murphytempleton - 7 January 2023
    Genuinely loved this one
    I went into this knowing I liked a lot of the music, but not expecting much more than that. I was not only pleasantly surprised, but also oddly overwhelmed by some of the elements I hadn't expected.

    As someone raised in an abusive home, I was quick to pin Matilda's parents in the original. However, it's downplayed in a lot of ways due to the nature of that film. Surprisingly, this version doesn't stray away from or lighten that what she's enduring is abuse.

    This is punctuated by an outstanding performance by the young actress playing Matilda. That child was able to convey so much emotion, so much raw intensity, that I felt almost small again. Feeling those feelings. Remembering that rage and pain.

    In this version, I found Matilda's arc and escape to be much more impactful. She's a strong little badass, with so many true features of a child in an abusive home.

    Please don't misunderstand, it's still a playful kids movie in many ways, but the core of it is empowering.

    I love a good musical, but I still wasn't expecting it to surpass the original in my mind. All of the characters were engaging, a nice diverse cast, generally well acted, and hard to look away from. The choreography, set designs, score- if Netflix puts it for sale, I'll be buying this one.
  • teja-49372 - 3 January 2023
    I didn't want it to end
    This was utter perfection, like complete and utter perfection. The casting choices were perfect. Alisha was perfectly witty as Matilda and Lashana was an amazing Miss Honey. Oh and her voice was absolutely fabulous, I wish she had sung more. Emma was completely unrecognizable as Trunchbull and I did not know that she could sing. The ensemble were insanely talented, like where the heck did they find so many little kids who could dance and sing? The choreography was great along with the songs. I kinda wish they included Telly but I can understand why it was left out. I know they also left out Matilda's brother but I didn't mind at all. In all it was great!
  • pattyrusciano - 1 January 2023
    Off the mark
    This was too bizarre, too strange and dark for a family film. No comedy relief whatsoever. If I had to try to explain it to my kids I could not. So far removed from the theater version, just such a disappointment to our family. The additional scenes, songs and characters added nothing to the plot and there was too little of Miss Honey. Every scene and song was either too over done or too boring. Somehow there was no continuity, it never kept me wondering what was going to happen next as there didn't seem to be a next, just a series of weird scenes sometimes going together sometimes not, very hard to care to follow.
  • mardishaw-09647 - 31 December 2022
    Disappointed.
    I think if you were not at all familiar with the stage musical, you would think this was pretty good. Production values were reasonably high (except for some truly bad CGI in places), and most of the performances were good. However, the funniest scenes in the stage show were completely omitted in favour of focussing on the sappy back story of the acrobat and escapologist, which, ok, is important, but needed far less time and money spent on it. Where was Michael? Where was Rudolfo? Where was the screamingly funny tango song from Mrs Wormwood to Miss Honey? This is a musical film, but it's not a film of the musical. Having worked on the stage musical, we were disappointed. Way too sappy.
  • corydparinger - 30 December 2022
    An Honest Review DeVito's OG Vs 2022
    Let's face it. Nostalgia clouds our judgement here, for those who grew up on Danny DeVito's Matilda. It's easy to write this movie off as bad when looking through rose tinted glasses.

    Truth is, this movie is much better than it has any right to be- from a production level and as a vision seen through to artistic realization. It's clear this movie was a labor of love, and not a cash grab. To that degree, you have to respect their ambition. I can easily see new-comers to the Matilda story potentially preferring this version of the story over Devito's, it does have it's own strengths. But this version is not the superior version of the film.

    In my opinion, it's just not as effective. This feels less like the nitty-gritty and nuanced portrayal of the Matilda-verse of the original movie, and more like a Disneyification of the story. With sanded edges, an immaculate attentiveness to 'perfection', and cheesy songs that are used as stand-in replacement for character development. It's entertaining, it's fun, but it's overly polished.

    The original Matilda, by contrast, benefits from the rough edges. It LIVES in the rough edges, unashamedly using those imperfections as part of it's charm. The gritty, unpolished, realism of the old Matilda complemented the themes of the story perfectly- celebrating the quirkiness of personalities and the artistic qualities of film as a medium, tying the two together into a powerful visual-metaphor with a complementary story. The new Matilda just does not capture that magic, that feeling. Instead, it feels like a Wes Anderson film where all of the attention went into being aesthetically pleasing, where as DeVito's version leaned into being aesthetically emotionally effective. And that's really the key difference between the two versions of the film- one focuses on the relationships and the emotional journey of the viewer, and the other (the newer) focuses on the production value and formalist design.

    Let's dig deeper into that.

    In the original Matilda, we learn about and care for the characters through nothing but subtle dialogue choices and direction choices; the way certain characters speak and treat each other, learning about how their families at home run, having the characters have common struggles and interests that unite their interest in each other- it's all done subtly and respects the audience to be emotionally intelligent enough to piece these characters together layer by later. There are no songs telling us how the characters feel, we have to observe them and their story and deduce their feelings- and in doing so, immerse ourselves into their story and learn to empathize and relate to their struggles. That's the true beauty of the story of Matilda, and it's something DeVito clearly understands about the source material. It's a film that understands the importance of being emotionally evocative, and how those types of film can be so formative to the audience, who for all DeVito knows could be a child whose family is as neglectful as Matilda's- a child who could see such a film and feel some sense of hope, or love, or at least for a second not feel alone. DeVito's Matilda is a world in which we want to reach out and give the characters a hug, to punch the school master ourselves, and to spend time with these characters and see them grow.

    Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical does not understand this relationship or it's importance. Instead, it removes all of the scenes between Ms. Honey and Matilda in which they actually grow and bond- it removes most of the scenes and interactions between Matilda and her parents and cheapens the impact of their sad but complex relationships. It ruins the impact of the Bruce cake eating scene, or of the Pokey. It removes our ability empathize with the other children. And it rushes to a conclusion that thematically doesn't do the story justice the way DeVito's does. It doesn't feel like this is a movie where the director had as much of an understanding of the source material or how to convey it's themes without expository songs. Instead of us seeing the events our characters go through that motivate their arcs- their developments and struggles and their choices behind overcoming those obstacles- we are spoon fed them with songs. Matilda sings the same few lines over and over, doing cartwheels down the hallway as her parents act like cardboard cutouts. We learn very little about the characters and how/why they feel the way they do through these songs, instead they seem to just take away any time that could have better been used exploring the characters, the world, and their relationships to each other. Had these songs been done in a way in which they were able to surpass DeVito's emotional storytelling, this film would be closer to being the best version. But it doesn't. These songs remove and ruin the emotion behind the story and it's themes, not add to it.

    This movie is far better than it has any right to be. But it is not the best version of the story for those of us who are already familiar with DeVito's version. It's mostly disappointing if you loved the original. However, if you are a newcomer to Matilda, a kid perhaps growing up right now and with no familiarity of the older version- you're probably going to really enjoy the film. It still has the baseline of the story baked in, it's heavily entertaining, and it's got an incredible visual style. It's just unfortunately watered down on the parts that don't really make sense to water down in a story like Matilda.

    I'd give it a 6/10 because I respect the artistry that went into the film- it's not a BAD film. Nothing about the movie is really "bad". But while the other Matilda was less polished, it had 10x the heart and 10x the charm- and for that reason, I cannot give this version a higher score.
  • Tweetienator - 28 December 2022
    No Good Tunes
    As a simple movie Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical maybe would have worked better for me - the cast is solid, the production too. But, and this makes the movie/musical really weak in my eyes, I didn't like one song, they are simply just bad and at best mediocre and boring. So my question here: why make a musical if you got no good tunes? No matter how charming and good the cast is, a musical raises or falls with its music - and this is the aspect that I really didn't like at all. Recommendation: watch the movie from 1996 - that one is in every way the better, more entertaining and heart-warming one.
  • dwhepworth - 27 December 2022
    Matilda was terrible
    This is a musical version of the classic children's book and later film version by author Ronald Dahl. The idea for the film and the premise was good, but one thing let it down. The actor hired to play Matilda was completely miscasted. She was completely unlikeable. Much of the time she had an entitled scowl on her face. It was hard to sympathise with her at the hands of Miss Truchbull. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I cheered Truchbull along and I wanted to give Matilda a good hiding myself. The supporting cast were competent. But t he original version is still the superior one. Give this one a miss.