![]() ![]() ![]() When it cannily hits the streaming platform on Christmas Day, “Matilda” could well grow into a phenomenon - especially in Britain, to which the film has been uncompromisingly tailored. That balance, correct or otherwise, isn’t likely to diminish the cross-family appeal of this year’s London Film Festival opener when it reaches audiences in December - via Sony in the U.K., and Netflix elsewhere. What you remember from it, however, is each scene in which elder malevolence deliciously spoils the party. ![]() The film, on balance, is cheery, sherbet-colored stuff, bursting with goodwill for all good people. 12-year-old Alisha Weir’s agreeably precocious title character and a large, eager ensemble of self-proclaimed “revolting children” fill the screen in one busy number after another, as they vocally stand up for kids’ right to be kids in the face of authoritarian adult opposition - only for Emma Thompson’s towering, truck-jawed antagonist to rather greedily pull focus from them with each rancorous line reading. ![]() And yet, even as its script dictates otherwise, grownups still get the upper hand in director Matthew Warchus’ bouncy screen transfer of his hit stage musical. ![]()
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