Author: Roald Dahl
Book to Movie Comparison
I recently read the book, Matilda, by Roald Dahl, and then proceeded to watch the 1996 movie based on the book. I had seen the movie before but not for a long time so I could remember the general plot line but few details. I had never read the book before and so I was excited to learn about the story that created the movie, since I often like reading the books after seeing the movie. This story is about a young girl who is exceptionally brilliant in math and reading, even though she has a very difficult home life and soon a very terrible principle at school. The young girl, Matilda, counters her rotten parents with many well planned practical jokes. When she meets her loving teacher at school, they discover even more brilliance about Matilda and work to help each other out of the awful lives they were raised in.
In my opinion, I think the movie did a decent job of sticking to the book’s original story line. Frequently I noticed a lot of the same exact scenes that were described in the book and also some of the same lines used. For example, Matilda gets her father back for his horrible attitude one time by putting some of her mother’s blond hair dye into his hair gel container. In the morning when he usually greases up his hair, he ends up putting blond streaks in his full dark locks, causing a large scene in the kitchen. This scene is extremely similar in the movie as it is written in the book. Another example, is the scene where Miss Trunchbull, the school principle, has an assembly to force a young boy to eat an entire large chocolate cake. Here at one point she says “…You sneaked like a serpent into the kitchen and stole a slice of my private chocolate chip cake from my tea-tray! That tray had just been prepared for me personally by the cook! It was my morning snack!” For whatever reason, when I heard these words spoken in the movie, I remembered them being word for word written in the book. However, at the same time this scene was changed for the movie to show Matilda as the heroine character. In the book, a random student shouted to encourage the boy while the rest of the students remained silent till the end. In the book this shouting came from Matilda as she gets the whole school out of their seats to cheer on the boy and then they are all kept after school for detention, which also does not happen in the book. There were many small differences between the book and movie of course but the main ones I think are the fact that the book takes place I England, and the movie adds the most dramatic scene of Matilda and Miss Honey sneaking into the Trunchbull’s house, which never happens in the book. A lot of the changes are to make the story more dramatic and focus more on Matilda’s special powers rather than her smart mind.
Another slight difference the movie has to the book is some of the casting. For the most part, I found the characters to be fitting of their description in the book except for Matilda’s parents. The book describes a very skinny, mean man who can be intimidated by ghosts and teachers, and a large, bouncing, self-centered woman. In the movie the father is instead short and plump, the mother very skinny. These are only slight alterations I know, but at the same time, I think the actors portrayed the characters’ personality quite well according to the book. So even though the physical descriptions may be a little off, I would not have changed the casting selections for this movie.
Both the book and the movie, I found enjoyable so it would be hard for me to pick between the two. To me, as an adult I like the book better because it is less dramatic and unrealistic compared to the movie. Though these are both geared for children, I believe kids would enjoy the movie better. The movie adds more dramatic scenes to the stories and really pushes Matilda’s special powers, which as a kid I remember being my favorite parts of the story. Re-watching the movie at my age now, I still enjoyed but also found humor in some of the unbelievable aspects of the movie. Though there were some of these parts in the book as well, they were less emphasized and more plausible written than on film. It is difficult to chose one over the other, but I believe the distinction would be because of age; adults would enjoy the book more and children will love the movie.
I would give the movie a positive rating because it was pleasing and entertaining. In a lot of ways the movie stuck to the script of the book, but also in a lot of ways many alterations were made in order to better hold the interest of the young viewers. As a kid, Matilda was a movie I truly loved because I liked the magical aspect and thought I was just like her. This is a great movie for children because of the fantasy aspect of powers all kids want mixed with a life and problems sometimes felt to be reality. From an educator’s standpoint, I think the book would also be great for kids, however, issues may arise with some the English culture within the text that even I did not fully grasp. This is a great reason for the book to be made into a movie in the first place. It is a great story that all kids can relate to and would enjoy, and the movie made it easier for American children to relate to, while at the same time juicing it up with extra drama and magic. This is a great story for children in form of a novel and a movie.
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