Matilda (film): Difference between revisions

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1996 film adaptation of [[Matilda (Literature)|the Roald Dahl book]] about an exceptionally clever little girl, Matilda Wormwood, who has exceptionally horrible and ignorant parents. Matilda has a love of learning and books, and her parents think she is stupid and deride her for reading while they watch mindless [[Soap Opera|Soap Operas]] and Game Shows.

* [[Cassandra Truth]]: The Trunchbull deliberately uses such outlandishly cruel punishments because any parent [[Refuge in Audacity|would assume a child was making them up.]]

* [[Ceiling Cling]]: Matilda, to the underside of a table.

* [[Child Prodigy]]: Matilda.

* [[Crazy Prepared]]: In the film, Matilda has had adoption papers on hand since she was big enough to xerox.

* [[Honest John's Dealership]]: Mr. Wormwood's secondhand car business. Matilda's dad is the stereotypical sleazy car salesman, even putting sawdust in the oil so that the engine will burn out and they have to come back and buy a new car.

* [[Hot Teacher]]: Miss Honey.

* [[Huge Guy, Tiny Girl]]: In the movie, Mr. Wormwood is shorter than Mrs. Wormwood, but he's now the pudgy one, and she the wiry one. Partly because they're played by the director, Danny DeVito, and his actual wife, Rhea Perlman.

* [[Humiliation Conga]]: The movie significantly pads the scene of Miss Trunchbull's downfall. {{spoiler|After her first being spooked by Matilda pretending to be the ghost of Magnus (with all the children in unison reading the chalkboard message), she is beaten up by chalk-covered erasers, knocked onto a globe by the same student she tried to throw out the window, and in the end is chased out of the school and into the parking lot by the entire school, driving away as they pelt her and her car with food from their lunchboxes.}}

* [[Refuge in Audacity]]: This is how the Trunchbull gets away with such shocking cruelty to the students. Any parent who heard their kid tell them the principal threw them in a closed chamber with broken glass and nails jutting out of the walls for several hours would naturally assume their kid was lying.

* [[Sadist Teacher]]: The Trunchbull, arguably the queen of this trope.

** It's ''very'' hard not to see the shot of Trunchbull snorting against the window as a direct reference to the raptor doing the same thing in the then-recent [[Jurassic Park]] movie.

** In the end of the movie, The Wormwoods, after giving up Matilda to be adopted by Ms. Honey, make their getaway to Guam. In another movie produced by Danny De Vito & staring him & his wife, Rhea Pearlman, [[The Ratings Game]], it has the wayward ship (with the Nielsen Ratings families on board) traveling to Guam. It also shows the Wormwood's stupidity since Guam is a U.S. Territory. Needless to say, even if they made it to Guam, the Law still catches up to them.

* [[The Unfavorite]]: Matilda's parents inexplicably hate her and refuse to believe she is any more intelligent than a lima bean (though, in the movie, Matilda's mother admits that she was mean to her because she never really understood her daughter), but favor her rather dim-witted brother Michael instead.

* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: While she doesn't seem to break down as much, the Trunchbull is obviously distraught that the children were able to get back at her which she didn't even forsaw.

{{quote| '''Miss Honey:''' I am not seven years old anymore, {{spoiler|Aunt Trunchbull!}}}}

** Also, the line directly before that one, spoken by {{spoiler|the Trunchbull to Miss Honey, her niece}}, may qualify: "{{spoiler|I broke your arm once, I can do it again Jenny}}."