‘Matilda’ Fights to Survive in Film With Split Personality

The deliciously dark stories of Roald Dahl have made for some refreshingly morbid children’s movies (“James and the Giant Peach” being the most recent example). But there’s such a thing as over-milking the nightmare.

Consider “Matilda,” for instance. Yes, the title character--played by the perfectly harmless Mara Wilson of “Mrs. Doubtfire” and the remade “Miracle on 34th Street”--is a prodigy, one who’s bad luck it is to be saddled with parents who neglect and belittle her. But do they have to be quite as trash-a-holic as Harry and Zinnia Wormwood (Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman)? These two, who wouldn’t make the cut on the “Ricki Lake Show,” turn the simple ritual of taking a newborn home from the hospital an act of child abuse.

“Everybody is born,” DeVito says in voice-over (he narrates, as well as produces, acts and directs), “but not everybody is born exactly the same.” Which means that some people are born exactly the same? Never mind. The point is that Matilda is special. As an infant, she writes her name in her spilled spinach puree. She becomes self-sufficient as soon as she can walk. She makes pancakes, reads prodigiously and knows--it would be sad if she didn’t--that she’s not where she belongs.

This is pure Dahl, of course, the misplacement and misuse of children by their universe. It might not be happy stuff, but it’s the aspect of his work that hooks almost everybody, whether they’re born the same or not.

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What won’t, unfortunately, is the split personality of this movie, lashed together with baling wire, chewing gum, chocolate icing and Nazi innuendo. When Matilda is at home, “Matilda”--like her parents--is loud, brassy, overdressed and rude. There’s a subplot about Harry being shadowed by the FBI for buying stolen car parts; there’s just too much. But when she finally convinces them it’s time she went to school--they think she’s 4; she convinces them she’s 6 1/2--the film shifts into blacker fantasy, and a far more coherent and entertaining sensibility.

Crunchem Hall--whose headmistress, Agatha Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), has had the bad sense to buy a car from Harry--is a hellhole, a concentration day-camp: Agatha, a cross between Charles Laughton in “Mutiny on the Bounty” and something out of “Seven Beauties,” is not above hurling a child over (luckily) the school’s spiked iron fence by her pigtails or sending them to solitary. Fortunately for Matilda, her teacher is Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz), whose good nature is the antidote to Agatha. And her own powers of mind of matter lead to a liberating conclusion.

It’s vaguely offensive, but intriguing, what DeVito--who, with the exception of Ferris, gets virtually no performances out of his actors--has done with Trunchbull. Clad in a kind of Wagnerian Girl Scout uniform, Agatha is a cliched lesbian monster. She becomes enraged when a classroom recitation employs only the names of married women; there’s something predatory about her relationship with Honey, something sadistically excremental about the chocolate-cake torture she inflicts on one fat student. She’s a threatening Freudian beast and is played to the hilt by Ferris. One has to wonder, though, whether the low-brow antics of the DeVito-Perlmans and the id-happy ravings of Mistress Trunchbull won’t induce psychological whiplash in the more impressionable factions of the audience.

* MPAA rating: PG, for elements of exaggerated meanness and ridicule, and for some mild language. Times guidelines: Cruelty inflicted on screen kids could disturb real ones.

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‘Matilda’

Mara Wilson: Matilda

Embeth Davidtz: Miss Honey

Pam Ferris: Agatha Trunchbull

Danny DeVito: Harry Wormwood

Rhea Perlman: Zinnia Wormwood

A Jersey Films production, distributed by TriStar. Director Danny DeVito. Producers DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher, Liccy Dahl. Screenwriters Robin Swicord, Nicholas Kazan. Cinematographer Stefan Czapsky. Editors Lynzee Klingman, Brent White. Production designer Bill Brzeski. Music David Newman. Costumes Jane Rhum. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.