Matilda (1996)
★★★★ — Matilda (1996)
Some kids' films are good. Some are great. And then there's Matilda, which sits in a category almost entirely its own. I don't say "one of the best kids' films ever made" lightly, and I mean every word of it.
What gets me every time is how completely it respects its audience. There's no hand-holding, no watered-down stakes, no reassurance that everything will be fine before you've had a chance to worry. The world Matilda Wormwood inhabits is genuinely unfair. Her family are awful to her. Her headmistress is a monster. The adults around her are either cruel or indifferent, and the film doesn't flinch from that. It shows kids something true: that the world can be stacked against you, and that it's still worth fighting back. That's not a small thing to put in a children's film. That takes a bit of nerve.
Mara Wilson in the lead is just perfect. She brings this quiet, contained intelligence to Matilda that makes you believe every bit of it. She's not a precocious movie kid doing cute things for the camera. She feels like a real child who happens to be extraordinary, and the restraint in that performance is remarkable. And then you've got Danny DeVito, who directed the thing as well as playing the father, pitching his performance at exactly the right level of cartoonish horror. The whole cast understands the tone, which is a tightrope walk: offbeat, slightly dark, funny and warm all at once. Tip too far in any direction and the whole thing falls apart. It never does.
The darkness is actually what gives the film its weight, and I think that's what keeps it alive decades on. Kids can smell it when a film is patronising them. They know when the danger is fake, when the emotion is manufactured, when the happy ending was never in doubt. Matilda earns its ending. You feel the relief of it because the threat was real enough to matter. That's the Roald Dahl DNA coming through, and the film honours it properly. It's a modern fairy tale in the truest sense: a bit frightening, a bit magical, and quietly insistent that good can win.
And the soundtrack. Good lord. I have hummed "Little Bitty Pretty One" more times than I could ever count, usually while trying to convince my daughter to tidy her room or do her homework, which feels entirely appropriate given the subject matter. That song is lodged in my brain for life and I have absolutely no complaints about it.
The thing that really seals it for me, though, is the generational test. I watched this endlessly as a kid. Loved it then, couldn't tell you exactly why, just knew it felt different. And then my daughter went through her own Matilda phase, rewatching it every weekend for a solid month. That's not nostalgia carrying it. That's a film genuinely working on a new audience with no help from me. She came to it fresh and it got her just as thoroughly as it got me. That's the sign of something that's built to last. It reminds me a little of how Alice in Wonderland has that same grip across generations, that strange dreamlike logic that feels personal no matter when you encounter it.
Four stars. Probably the closest thing to a perfect family film that exists, and I'll defend that opinion happily over a pint any time you like.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 1996 | Watched: 2025-05-14
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Google Play Movies
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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More family: Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Wonder (2017) · Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anastasia (1997)
