“Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical” (PG) ***

THIS is a film about children, with a cast preponderantly composed of children. But I judge that many children will find it to be just a little bit too grown up for their taste.

It’s one of two movies released during 2022 that tell Dahl’s story about how a girl foiled a domineering head mistress (from what I’ve been able to discover, the other has had only limited release). 

Not having read how Dahl wrote it disqualifies me from being able to tell you how well director Matthew Warchus has managed its staging as a musical play. 

Together with Dennis Kelly who developed his 2010 stage musical of the story into the screenplay and Aussie (well, England-born to Australian parents who brought him back here to raise him into a dinky-di Aussie) Tim Minchin who wrote the words and the music to sing them to, make a formidable creative team whose confection whirls and cavorts across the screen in a manner both impressive and joyous.

Standing up for what’s right, Matildá’s kinetic powers underlie the core of the plot. Irish actress Alisha Weir, who turned 13 two months ago, was 11 years old when she played her. She’s reportedly already a millionaire after roles in just three movies and a TV series episode!

However, this time she is required to confront one of the great ladies of British acting, the multiple-award-winning Emma Thompson. Matilda’s parents (Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough) have enrolled her at Crunchem College, where she must confront the formidable Agatha Trunchbull, a principal for whom anything less than perfection is anathema. 

Playing her is Dame Emma Thompson (I didn’t know before beginning to write this review that she had been made a CBE in 2018). The role is a caricature of unweening abuse of power, written to harvest scornful laughter, easy to blow raspberries at – and altogether a wonderful pleasure to watch because of her overplaying of it.

At Dendy