THB #286: Matilda - The Musical Movie

Full Disclosure: I love “Matilda the Musical,” which I saw on Broadway multiple times and then with the touring company in Los Angeles. So I come to this with a certain bias and, as happens with critics, too much awareness of the source material that I have already chewed over before getting to the thing that is in front of me to assess.

I wonder… did Netflix pull a Chapek by unceremoniously dumping what they call Roald Dahl’s Matilda The Musical onto the service on Christmas Day with little advertising, little promotion, no awards push at all, and screening just enough to get 64 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing? (Glass Onion has 317.)

There are, in my opinion, a few major mistakes in the conversion of this show that won 5 Tonys and 7 Oliviers. But the magic of the show still emerges from this adaptation, which amazingly, while directed by the stage director, never feels like an opened-up stage show. The movie is playing in theaters in the U.K., where the show is still playing strong on the West End.

I’m a fan of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Avatar: The Way of Water is a good violent family movie, but had Netflix decided they really liked this film, it should have opened in theaters in November, when the was a dearth of family options at the movies. And it should have opened for real. If they wanted to go to the service on Christmas, at least it would have had a chance to breathe on a big screen or two. I kind of wish Netflix had sold theatrical rights to America back to Sony and let them make a run at it. (They could have booked some of the premium screens it deserves.) Because the show is, as it always was, deceptively grown up for a movie mostly about kids.

The Roald Dahl book, previously made into a film by Danny DeVito that lives as a minor classic, is familiar enough that I won’t worry about spoilers here. Matilda is a young girl whose parents don’t want to be parents. Unlike her parents, she is a genius and finds her salvation in books. When she goes to Crunchem Hall for school, she connects with two female figures. Headmistress Agatha Trunchbull, former Olympic hammer thrower is a hater of children and generally evil adult bully. Miss Honey is the meek, deeply kind, insightful young adult woman who loves children and wants to give them everything.

The show is built on and around 6 showstopping songs, written by Tim Minchin. “Miracle,” which reminds us of the positive light of how (almost) everyone sees their child, “Naughty,” in which Matilda establishes her standards for life as a person and as a kid, “When I Grow Up,” about our childhood (and sometimes adult) imagination, “The Smell of Rebellion,” which is Trunchbull’s moment to explain her dark weirdness, “My House,” in which Miss Honey finally explains how she has protected herself emotionally (not unlike Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Own Little Corner” from “Cinderella”), and “Revolting Children,” in which the kids finally have their say.

And there are big moments beyond that, some of which have made the cut (most significantly, Matilda’s story about the acrobat and the escapologist and “Bruce”) and some of which have not (“Telly” in which Matilda’s father happily explains how he doesn’t need books because he learns everything on TV. No idea whether that was cut by Netflix for being about Netflix or if they shot it and it just didn’t work).

Director Matthew Warchus, with a few exceptions, puts the limitations of a theater’s proscenium arch behind him and the film. The movie opens with “Miracle” and you would never know this production number has its roots anywhere but in film. It’s a brilliant launch, as it’s universal without any effort to be universal. Andrea Riseborough, as Matilda’s about-to-be mother, gives us big comic brilliance from the top. Warchus shows us that he is not afraid to work every angle on the movie musical right away.

Leap to our young (9 or 10?) hero, Matilda, being very clear on who she is and how her parents aren’t even interested in understanding (or loving) her. Her parents forgot to send her to school. The authorities intervene. So they send her to Crunchem Hall, where they expect her to be broken by Agatha Trunchbull. So, “Naughty.” "

“Just because you find that life’s not fair… it
Doesn’t mean that you just have to grin and bear it.
If you always take it on the chin and wear it,
Nothing will change.

Even if you’re little you can do a lot… you
Mustn’t let a little thing like “little” stop you
If you sit around and let them get on top… you
Might as well be saying
You think that it’s okay
And that’s not right
And if it’s not right
You have to put it right."

The kid… Matilda… Alisha Weir… she’s a little musical assassin. She has a very expressive face with, at 11 or 12 years of age when she shot this, all kinds of curves and angles and a young wrinkled forehead and big active eyebrows that don’t scream “movie kid,” but just precocious kid.

Matilda tells stories to the bookmobile lady, Mrs Phelps (Sindhu Vee), and in particular, the story of the acrobat and the escapologist. Warchus does a luscious job bringing those stories to life with almost silent, visually rich imagery.

Matilda goes to Crunchem… bullied a bit by older kids… but is united with Miss Honey, who recognizes the genius in Matilda from the start. We meet Trunchbull, whose motto for her school is “Children are maggots.”

This is where we hit the most problematic thing in the adaptation of the musical show to the movie. The casting of Emma Thompson as Trunchbull and Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey.

And this is where I repeat a theme I have been feeling a lot recently… both performances are excellent. But both are, by no fault of the actresses, not right for this movie.

Trunchbull was played on the stage by Bertie Carvel - a man in drag - who gave one of the greatest performances I have ever seen in the theater. He lost the Tony to Billy Porter, who as great as he is, didn’t have a role in “Kinky Boots” that topped Carvel as Agatha Trunchbull… sorry.

I believe in theater traditions, especially in adaptations. The most famous, recently, was Travolta as Edna Turnblad in Hairspray, which was not Oscar nominated, which I still believe is an embarrassment. He did what Fred Astaire was doing, but in heels, and with a penis.

When they announced that Netflix would be involved with the Matilda The Musical movie, there was a rumor that Ralph Fiennes would take on Trunchbull. I don’t know why that fell out. Feels kinda overly P.C. But maybe he couldn’t handle the singing. No idea, really.

But now that I have seen the movie musical, I have become aware that it is more than the theatrical tradition of playing the role in drag that matters. (For the record, a woman, Pam Ferris, now 74, brilliantly played Trunchbull in the non-musical DeVito version in 1996.) The thing about Trunchbull in this show is that she is such a nasty piece of work that the ambiguity of the drag performance made her less real and less brutal. In doing the role, Bertie Carvel could go much bigger and broader with the character - in the great traditional of drag - historic and modern - becoming almost a Punch-n-Judy kind of character in a show in which that Panto/puppet show feeling is the tone for most of what isn’t intimate.

This is a show (and book) where a little girl is swung by her pigtails by Trunchbull and thrown, like a hammer, a few hundred feet away. A boy’s ears are stretched - because Trunchbull has learned they don’t come off, they stretch - beyond the point of absurdity. Matilda is not only a genius… she has powers of telekinesis.

Emma Thompson does everything she is asked and more in this role. She is great. But she is too real. You believe her rage. You believe her cruelty. As film tends to do, the character becomes more literalized than on a stage or in a book, where more is imagined.

Also, Thompson is stuck with some of the great moments that Bertie Carvel created, with his voice, which was pitched in a way that could be a man or a woman singing, but also in his physicality, which never seems quite real. Emma Thompson’s Trunchbull feels real. My issue is not about blurring sexuality, pro or con… it’s about the hyper-reality.

“The Smell of Rebellion” is a music hall number and Thompson’s Agatha is just too real to bring the tease the way DragAtha did.

I couldn’t find Bertie Carvel doing Rebellion on stage, so here is another song someone illegally taped from the balcony and then Carvel doing Rebellion for the album, out of drag. You can see the fun he is having… where Thompson’s take feels like she is explaining her character in a real way.

Likewise, Lashana Lynch is a lovely surprise in the role of Miss Honey. She has a nice voice and her take on the role is a different thing than the stage musical. I don’t really care about her race as an issue in the casting. The first question in this role is whether I believe that she grew up as a child who has lost her parents… and I did. And the connective sequences that Warchus does regarding that are quite beautiful.

The problem comes with Miss Honey’s big song, My House, which is a classic English Beauty Rose kind of song sung by a victim whose high voice floats above the realities of her life. It is a showstopper that is different than anything else in the show. Honey has a couple brief singing moments that were cut from the stage version. So this is Honey’s big moment. Lynch brings across the song, softening it to her range. And unfortunately, it’s just not the same.

I mean, Warchus and the actors completely got me in the back half of the song, when they make the connection between Honey and the parents she lost. It is impossibly powerful. But with the kind of voices that have sung the song before, the song remains high above. Not so much here. It’s not bad…it’s just not as good. You just don’t see Lynch as being as vulnerable as one did in the show. The discussion of race is there in a way it wasn’t… and it is worthy and powerful… but there is no time to do more than feel it and move on. This number left a different kind of mark on stage and I think it’s casting. It’s the voice and the feeling of child-like vulnerability.

Moving on…

When Emma Thompson says, before the ultimate confrontation with Matilda, “How can I be your headmistress if I can’t chill you to the bone,” you believe her. That she would hurt children and not care.

I suppose Thompson could have been directed to go farther over the top when she has a tantrum as she finds out that the children at the school have actually learned something. But the drag Trunchbull was always at that pitch, which I believe fits the show much better… great, again, as Thompson is. There are massive laugh lines that just don’t play funny this way.

Near the end, Warchus uses computer graphics in a big way for the second time in the film to enormous effect. (There is plenty in the film… but these are clear set pieces that use CG a lot.) Matilda creates an embodiment of the escapologist that is sensational. And the earlier piece of CG-supported magic is “When I Grow Up,” which is one of the great songs of musical theater in the last couple decades, and which gets its due here absolutely. That 3 minutes was the ad this movie needed, playing to all demos.

The final mistake in the film is to have changed the closing number from a reprise of “When I Grow Up” and “Naughty” to a kind of mother/child love song called, “Still Holding My Hand,” which is written by the great Tim Minchin, but is not what the movie is about, thus missing the moment.

It’s a pretty song, but Honey grows up because of the child, not the other way. It is not am equal coming of age. Reflective, but not equal.

It’s a show about the kids.

“When I grow up
I will be tall enough to reach the branches
That I need to reach to climb
The trees you get to climb
When you're grown up

And when I grow up
I will be smart enough to answer all
The questions that you need to know
The answers to
Before you're grown up”

And then Matilda gets the last word…

“MATILDA
And if it's not right
You have to put it right

But nobody else is gonna put it right for me
Nobody but me is gonna change my story
Sometimes you have to be a little bit –

TRUNCHBULL
Maggots!

COMPANY
– naughty!”

As you might be able to tell, I still love this thing.

I underestimate kids and adults sometimes, but Netflix should be offering a “Sing-A-Long” version of the film so every can be clear on the genius lyrics in the show. I know that when I took my then-8-ish kid, he had a hard time hearing every lyric through British accents and ambient noise. Turning on the subtitles is sub-optimal.

The Matilda team and especially Warchus deserve enormous credit for what they (re)created here. I don’t think it would necessarily get the following of Encanto, after Disney screwed up that theatrical release. I think those songs were a bit more commercial. And these songs have been out there, across the globe, for a dozen years already. But this is a movie that kids, if they ever find it, will watch over and over and over again.

This is the 8th conversion from Broadway in the last decade. (West Side Story, In the Heights, Cats, Beauty and the Beast (live action combo of the animated film and the stage musical), Into the Woods, Jersey Boys, Annie (2014)). I put it easily in the Top 3.

Until tomorrow…