Matilda was originally a book written by Roald Dahl. The first was was amazing I still love it but it's completely different to the story and they Americanised it. The musical film is far closer to the book than the first film ever was. Love the book love the film love the musical and love the musical film it was amazing they're all amazing

the fact that you’re persistently calling this a ‘reboot’ is painful. surely through just watching this film, you can understand that this is the furthest thing from a ‘reboot’ and has nothing to do with the 1996 film, which is why you’ll find that it is not a ‘carbon copy’; absolutely nothing is based off that film in this version. regardless, I’m glad you enjoyed it.

anyone who thinks poc existing in films is "woke" needs to touch grass

Y’all know this is actually based on the musical Matilda- right? There is a stage musical that got adapted to this movie. In question though… why would this, or anything for that matter be considered “woke”? 😀

Matilda is initially a book by Roald Dahl. Not a movie.

I’ve seen it and it’s amazing! Hearing you talk about how much you liked the songs and the choreography…. I highly recommend going to see Matilda the Musical in the west end theatre! It’s absolutely incredible and is live! Has all the songs from the movie (except the last song which is new) and has a few other songs too which were cut for the movie.

It’s not a reboot of the 90’s film !

It’s really good. I love the way the songs tell the story, especially the alphabet one.

I for one, welcome the new diverse Matilda reimagining. Though I'm not sure it truly reflected modern Britain. Obviously casting should reflect the society it purports to portray- hence all future film makers should take note of the most recent UK census results (2021). If we're being truly reflective then roughly: 4.1% of the cast should be black, 82% of the cast should be white , 7% Asian and so on. Only by rigidly adhering to these standards should we deign to watch it, because as we all know race/ethnicity is the most important facet of any production. So while Matilda made great strides with some the depiction and representation of some races I feel many kids watching will still feel unrepresented on the big screen.

Lol it's not a reboot, it's an adaptation of the theatre production that itself is inspired by the novel. This review should be called the 90s film compared to the new one.

You should watch the original west end musical version. It's what this reboot originated from, that version is even better. And the school song (the song one with the alphabet) is done even better on stage with the choreography.

Does this man know that Matilda was a book first. So annoying to hear him refer to the American film as 'the original'

I recommend looking up clips of the original musical. The way they translated the stage show to screen is really impressive. For example, "When I Grow Up" is the act 2 opener, which reorients the Audience after intermission. The original choreography uses a swing set, and kids flying over the audience in swings is this magical theatrical moment (there are tons of clips on KZfaq). I liked how they replaced that choreo with jet planes. It captures the wonder of the original show in a way that makes sense to the screen. The alphabet song was also a brilliant retranslation of the stage show. Again, look up the original on KZfaq. It's hard to explain via text. Side notes: a lot of Matilda musical fans were initially worried about Emma Thompson playing Trunchbull, as she's usually played by a male actor on screen, and Thompson isn't usually known for playing menacing characters. But she KILLED it! She was having a blast playing Miss Trunchbull and it showed. Thompson also played Mrs Lovett in a Lincoln Center concert staging of Sweeney Todd. I believe you can find the full thing if you look up "Sweeney Todd Lincoln center" on KZfaq. That's the other performance where Thompson gets to play with a darker, albeit more morally ambiguous than Trunchbull character. Because I'd seen her steal the show as Mrs Lovett, I had more confidence than some other fans. I actually think that race swapping Jenny added an interesting subtextual layer, as now you have a black family of performers being discriminated against and exploited. There's a long historical precedent, at least in the United States, of similar things happening to black performers. So if anything, the race swap enriched the story, if only subtextually. And the actress who played Miss Honey was AMAZING. She really understood the assignment. I'm a huge musicals nerd, and Matilda is one of my favorite shows. There have been so many terrible adaptations of brilliant musicals (cough cough Into the Woods cough cough), I'm relieved that this one was done so well. It puts the audience in the perspective of a child, which makes the musical and fantastical elements make sense on film. So yeah. I'm nerding out hard core over this adaptation.

Wait a minute! That was Emma Thompson!! Holy! She was completely unrecognizeable. Gj.

If they are going to do diversity this is how you do it !! The acting and performance was AMAZING marvel needs to take note…the race wasn’t a big deal ! At all

This is not a reboot. Its a musical film, based upon a book. Its a great movie, highly recommended.

I thought this was AMAZING. I love the 90s film and I love the book But something about this one hit me so hard and I want to watch it again

The amount of people that have no idea that this is originally a Book astounds me to be honest.

I saw Emma Thompson and all I can think of was, this is Robert De Niro.

I think the new version is great as a musical film. However it is a completely different film from the 1996 version, which is brilliant. It's best just to accept the differences. I never understand why they have to change stories. I am wary of the movie version of Wicked already, why is it being made into 2 movies?

It's not a reboot of the 90s film. It's an adaptation of the stage musical which was in turn based on the book by Roald Dahl.

This movie crushed my soul! The performances were incredible. The old american Matilda movie is delightful. But this one is is moving and powerful and wise and endearing. This Matilda actually explores the mental and emotional consequences of being a powerless child with abusive caregivers. Anytime Matilda is hurt by her parents, she retreats into that imaginary world (at least she thinks it's imagined) where the characters in her story suffer abuse - so Matilda can deal with the pain vicariously through those characters in their story. Instead of suffering the pain directly as her own pain. Whoever wrote this must have had a deep understanding of these things. My hat is off to you. I think I started crying where Matilda imagines herself hugging Magnus, in the place of his daughter. And I hardly stopped until after the cathartic climax. Lashana Lynch was an incredible Miss Honey. There was so much coming from behind her eyes, even when she wasnt speaking. And the way she sung about that stubborn little fire was very moving.

Thank you for not mentioning that this is a spoiler review.

This is a great insightful review!!! Thanks so much for this 🧡

This movie friggin kicks ass.

Interesting review. I love your excited energy 😂 lol. In all seriousness I saw it today and loved it I was gutted to miss the musical and Tim Minchin’s music is stellar. The black Miss honey thing was jarring at first mainly because in every version of Matilda I have seen she has always been played by a white female including in the musical stage show the movie is taken from. You are right though it is no big deal. Oh and yeah Emma Thomson… Damn that makeup was superb.

Miss Honey is still the same as the original? No.

“It’s completely different.” Yeah. It’s almost like it’s an adaptation of the source material book and not based off the movie.

This is NOT a remake or reboot!!!!!!!!! Do you not know who Roald Dahl is? This is a faithful adaptation of his book, the only original aspect of the musical is Matilda’s storytelling. It is in no way related to the American film. The stage musical is critically acclaimed and widely known, it’s odd you didn’t know any of this before making a review of the film. The stage show even had a cinematic theatrical release prior to this film being made. Why would you not at-least do the bare minimum research before making a review? 🤦‍♂️ And the whole talk on the race of character - yes, you are right, the race of Miss Honey doesn’t and shouldn’t matter - but was anyone questioning the race of the character to begin with or were you just surprised when she came on screen and she wasn’t how you imagined the character looking like? Just thought it was odd that it was brought up.

I saw it and it was insane

I watched the musical and didn't see anything woke about it....

Not sure why they had to race swap particular characters I noticed they keep the villain this colour ◻👈 why not just well enough alone. And for all tou people who know who you are black panther swapped to a white man, you'd all lose your minds.

Nothing beats the 90s one .

Amazing review!! You made me more excited for the film. Can't wait!

Someone who hasnt seen the broadway and westend shouldnt be doing a review of Matilda the Musical

I was disappointed and disturbed by the woke twists applied to the brilliant musical by Tim Minchin: if it ain’t broke, why TF try to “fix” it?! I don’t mind diversity in casting to match a modern-day British school community, but seriously, did every good character apart from Matilda herself need to be non-white? While the bad characters were all white (inc. mean older girl at school, greedy Bruce Bogtrotter)? At least they were all good actors, all gave excellent performances. More concerning were the efforts to make Matilda a “Mary Sue”/Rey Skywalker who is not just very bright, but incandescent from the beginning without external help, e.g. she can solve complicated mathematical equations on her first day in Kindy, has read 10 classic novels in the past week (edit: I’ve removed part of the original comment where it was pointed out that my memory of the original stage musical was wrong). But worst was when Matilda uses her psychokinetic powers to throw Ms Trunchbull out a window: a critical element of Roald Dahl’s story, respected in the stage musical, was that Ms Trunchbull is transgressing moral boundaries by being explicitly physically violent to the children, but Matilda stays within a “grey zone” of rebellious naughtiness, fighting a kind of guerilla warfare with tricks and threats, but not physically attacking her, and thus retains a moral high ground. The film breaks that contrast and thereby spoils the tension: is it saying that if someone breaks rules to commit violence against us then we should also dispense with rules and be violent back? This is particularly sinister if you link it to the current trend to consider offensive words as “violence” which justify physical retaliation, but maybe I’m overthinking that bit. In any case, whereas I came out of the stage musical thinking “they changed a few things from the book, and it WORKED!”, I finished this film thinking “they changed lots of things from the musical, and everything they changed was worse than the original material”.

Stop demonizing the word woke, just because there’s characters with internal struggle and not just external, and other races exist in the film, does not mean it’s forcing an agenda. People sound uneducated if they use woke as a legitimate criticism. And it doesn’t matter if you have only seen the 1996 film. It’s still not a reboot of that film. You might only have been exposed to that version, but that does not change the intent of the creators to make an adaptation of the book, not a reboot of the original movie.

Race isn't integral except when your character is bad or mean then you have to be white because racism or some bullcrap like that.

Saw it today: great performance from the kids, but more proof of any were needed that Emma Thompson can't act anymore.

What I'm hearing is that you didn't read the book. You repeat yourself in your review and use too many unsupported superlatives. I didn't find this review helpful for these main reasons. Good luck for your videos, but this one is a miss for me.

Miss honey in parts did feel more forced than the original film

"Everything woke turns to sh@t"

In regards to the race swap thing i just kinda hate that it’s racist if we change a character that was originally black to white but it’s not when it’s a character changed to black, but it’s hard to tell if they specifically chose to do it just for the sake of diversity or if it was because she was just good for the role if thats the case i don’t have any problem with it at all, but normally I wouldn’t anyway it’s just always hearing about it just makes it annoy me a lot especially the double standards but otherwise i don’t think it’s super important

do you ever sit and wonder how you’ll ever ACTUALLY enjoy a film while looking for something woke to complain about?? must be boring.