Matilda
Short description
Matilda Wormwood is a highly intelligent child whose self-absorbed parents, Harry and Zinnia, pay her almost no attention. When she finally starts school, she finds a kind teacher in Miss Honey and a circle of friends, but also the school's brutal headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull, who treats children as a nuisance. Fed up with the cruelty around her, Matilda discovers she can move objects with her mind and turns that ability against the adults who have made her life miserable.
The film is Danny DeVito's fifth feature as director, following Throw Momma from the Train, The War of the Roses, Hoffa and preceding Death to Smoochy and Duplex. DeVito also produced and appears as Mr. Wormwood, and narrates. Mara Wilson plays Matilda, with Rhea Perlman as Mrs. Wormwood, Embeth Davidtz as Miss Honey and Pam Ferris as Trunchbull. Robin Swicord and Nicholas Kazan wrote the screenplay, and the credited cast and crew number 67 and 43 respectively.
Released in August 1996, the film runs 98 minutes and mixes comedy, family and fantasy. It was made for 36 million dollars and took in about 34 million worldwide, so it did not recover its budget at the box office. On IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from roughly 194,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 out of 10 from nearly 5,000 votes. A critics' rating of 7.5 out of 10 from 25 reviews puts critical approval slightly above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- During the filming of the film, Susan Shapiro, Mara Wilson's mother, died of breast cancer. Wilson finished filming in memory of her mother, and the film was dedicated to her memory. The actress believed for many years that her mother had not seen the completed film, but one day Danny DeVito told her that he personally witnessed Shapiro watching the unedited film before her death.
- Unlike their characters, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman became very close to Mara Wilson during filming. According to Wilson, they repeatedly invited her to their home while her father was at work and her mother was in the hospital.
- A photograph of Roald Dahl (1916-1990), the author of the original literary source (1988), was used as the image of Magnus, Miss Honey's father.
- Mara Wilson was so embarrassed to dance to “Little Bitty Pretty One” that, at Danny DeVito's insistence, everyone present on set performed the same steps simultaneously with her.
- Pam Ferris often remained in character even after filming ended, frightening the children involved in the film so that their fear of her character would appear as natural as possible during shooting.
- According to Danny DeVito, the chalk seemingly wrote on the board on its own thanks to the following trick: all the words were written backwards on the back of the board, after which a magnet was attached to the chalk, and someone then stood behind the board and wrote the words backwards using a device with magnetic properties.
- The scene where Bruce is forced to eat chocolate cake took the longest to film.
- The newborn Matilda was played by two pairs of twins – a pair of girls and a pair of boys.
- When Matilda fries pancakes for herself at the beginning of the film, they burn, but in the next shot, when she puts them on a plate, they are all perfectly golden brown, not burnt-brown.
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