Matilda

Danny DeVito directs, narrates and plays the book hating used car dealer father; the mother is Rhea Perlman, married to him at the time. Matilda brings herself up on library books nobody at home notices, is sent to a school where the headmistress calls shutting children in her spiked cupboard, the Chokey, discipline, and finds she can move objects by looking at them. DeVito and cinematographer Stefan Czapsky shoot nearly everything on wide angle lenses with exaggerated perspective, so the adults read as physically distorted, not merely unkind. Pam Ferris, who plays the headmistress, was hurt twice: chalk dust from the blackboard sequence sent her to hospital, and the tip of her finger tore while swinging a pupil by the pigtails, needing stitches. Roald Dahl set the novel in an English village and ended it with the parents escaping to Spain. The film moves everything to the United States, makes the father a man the FBI is watching over stolen car parts, and points the escape at Guam. In the book the telekinesis drains away as lessons get harder; DeVito builds his climax on it. A good fit if the wide angle distortion of every adult face reads as the joke, not a fault. Not for a parent who objects to the cupboard and the pigtail swing played for laughs.