Matilda Plot

Matilda is a 1996 film directed by Danny DeVito. It is based on Roald Dahl's children's novel. The film was released by TriStar Pictures.

One major difference between the novel and the film is the setting. In the novel, Matilda lives in England where Roald Dahl lived (although his parents were Norwegian and he grew up in Wales). In the movie, Matilda lives in the USA and most of the film was shot in the East Whittier district of Los Angeles, California. The only character to remain British in the film is Agatha Trunchbull (the antagonist) played by Pam Ferris.

Considering the original work was a short, fairly thin story, much was added to bring it up to feature length, including a scene where Matilda retrieves Miss Honey's old doll from the Trunchbull's mansion. In the original book, Matilda's mother is not given a first name, but she is in the film, and the physical builds of Matilda's parents are reversed in the film.

Matilda's brother is also changed. In the book, he is seen as normal and has little dialogue in the book and at the end, when he leaves with his parents for Spain, he waves his sister goodbye. In the film, his character is more active, is mean to his little sister and is fat like his father, and spoiled (though, in the book, Matilda's brother is not physically described but the Quentin Blake illustration from the book shows that he is skinny like his sister. In the book, it is not stated whether or not he is mean to Matilda). In the movie, he actually is given comeuppance by his sister when she uses her powers for a few different punishments, where he gets cake splattered all over him or gets a carrot shot into his mouth. Also, when the family is moving, the book says they are moving to Spain. But in the movie, they are moving to Guam.

Also, in the book Miss Honey lives in a miserable bare cottage without electricity or running water, but in the film her cottage is much nicer and cozier. She is also given the nickname "Bumblebee" which is not mentioned in the novel. Another change in Miss Honey is that in the book, she wears glasses, but she does not in the film (except when she uses it to check Matilda's calculation). Also Matilda loses her powers in the book. In the film, she still has her powers at the end, but the ending narration says that now that Matilda was happy, she never had to use her powers again (except for trivial things, like getting a book off the shelf).

In the book, the scene where Matilda's father rips her library book, the book he rips up is John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony" while stating that "if it's by an American, it's garbage!" In the movie version, the book was Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" and Matilda's father rips it up because he wants Matilda to watch TV just like everyone else in the family (resulting in the TV blowing up as she's forced to watch it, which implies that Matilda destroyed the TV with her mind).

Also, the film shows only two pranks that Matilda plays on her father as "punishment for being bad": putting superglue on the band of his hat and mixing her mother's peroxide into her father's hair lotion. In the book, there is an extra prank in which Matilda borrows a parrot from a friend and puts in her chimney for the evening and so when the parrot speaks, the rest of the family believes that there is a burglar or a ghost in the house. However, this could have been cut because the other two pranks have a more lasting effect, or perhaps over fears of portraying cruelty to animals.

The special edition DVD was released on June 7, 2005. It comes with a full two hours of bonus features, including games and featurettes.