Feeling sympathy for Matilda, Miss Honey invites her to her house for tea after school and lets her in on a secret: her mother died when she was two, and her father Magnus invited his wife's stepsister, Trunchbull, to live with them and look after her, but Trunchbull abused her. Trunchbull accuses Matilda, who, in anger at the injustice, telekinetically tips the glass over, splashing the newt onto Trunchbull. While she waits to be let out, her friend Lavender puts a newt in Trunchbull's water jug. Matilda discovers her father is under surveillance by the FBI over his illegal dealings, but her parents refuse to believe her when she warns them.Īfter discovering the car Harry sold her was faulty, Trunchbull locks Matilda in the chokey as punishment. Matilda leads the junior and senior students in cheering the boy to success, and Trunchbull gives them all five hours detention as a punishment.

Trunchbull has the whole school watch her force a boy to eat an entire enormous chocolate cake as punishment for stealing her piece of chocolate cake from the school kitchen. The Wormwoods also ignore and insult Miss Honey when she visits them to discuss Matilda's potential to attend college early. Matilda's teacher, Miss Jennifer Honey, notices the ease with which Matilda answers middle school multiplication problems and requests Matilda be moved to a higher class, but Trunchbull refuses. Upon her first day, Matilda meets other students who warn her about Trunchbull's abusive methods of discipline, which include throwing students out the window and locking them in 'the chokey', a small cramped closet resembling an iron maiden. Harry sells a car to Miss Trunchbull, the tyrannical principal of Crunchem Hall Elementary School, in exchange for admitting Matilda as a student. Matilda becomes increasingly enraged until the television explodes. After a restaurant trip goes wrong, Harry catches Matilda reading Moby-Dick, rips it up, and forces her to watch a game show on television. When Matilda's parents refuse to embrace her intellect or enroll her into school, she puts bleach in her father's hair tonic and glues his hat to his head. Smart and independent, she finds solace in the fictional worlds of books at the public library. Six-year-old genius Matilda Wormwood is neglected and mistreated by her used car salesman father Harry, her stay-at-home mother Zinnia, and her older brother Michael. However, it did achieve greater success when it was released on VHS. By box office standards, the film was commercially unsuccessful, grossing $33.5 million in the United States on a $36 million budget. The film received positive reviews from critics, with praise being directed towards its faithfulness to the novel and DeVito's direction. Matilda was released in the United States on August 2, 1996, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The plot centers on the titular child prodigy who develops psychokinetic abilities and uses them to deal with her disreputable family and the tyrannical principal of her school.

The film stars Mara Wilson as the title character with DeVito (who also served a dual role as the narrator), Rhea Perlman, Embeth Davidtz, and Pam Ferris in supporting roles. Matilda is a 1996 American fantasy comedy film co-produced and directed by Danny DeVito from a screenplay by Nicholas Kazan and Robin Swicord, based on the 1988 novel of the same name by Roald Dahl.

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