Matilda the Musical - fabulous performances but the film's a disappointment

A fabulous, adorable central performance from the remarkable Alisha Weir as Matilda is all the reason you could possibly ever want to see this film. But that doesn’t disguise the fact that as a film it’s a real mixed bag which loses momentum, never really has any great driving force of a story behind it and far too often goes absolutely nowhere.

The original tale is the hugely poignant tale of an utterly unwanted, bullied child who against all the odds finds precisely the love and the care she so richly deserves. But that’s not a tale which comes across anywhere near strongly enough in the new big screen adaptation of the Dennis Kelly/Tim Minchin musical – which goes for set pieces and big performances instead.

It feels almost as it the story has been abandoned in favour of total focus on the either totally-bizarre or completely-lovable characters Roald Dahl so famously created. Which is fine up to a point – but leaves the film stagnant for long chunks. There’s an awfully long scene on a ghastly assault course in the rain which makes its point quickly enough but then refuses to end.

The final ten minutes pick up the pace and the film ends beautifully and memorably, but the overall impression – despite the fine performances – is that it took an awfully long time getting there. But if this is the break-out discovery film for Alisha Weir, then maybe that’s enough. It’s a superb performance she gives as the sole and completely neglected child of the trashy, dodgy Wormwoods – great performances from Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough.

When it’s discovered that they have been holding her back from school, they pack her off to Crunchem Hall, run by the appalling Miss Trunchbull, Emma Thompson in full-on totally OTT mode. Miss Trunchull, dressed in pseudo-military outfit and monitoring everything on her bank of spy cameras, is convinced that unless the smallest children slightly pee themselves when she walks in, then she is failing as an educator. But while she’s endlessly inventive in her cruelty, she’s so grotesque from the outset that, like the film itself, she hasn’t really got anywhere to go.

The film gets bogged down by her, just as its gets thoroughly bogged down by Matilda’s unfolding story of an escapologist and his wife. You end up just longing for the whole thing to actually get on with it – which of course it does, but only eventually.

But at least there is a genuinely delightful performance to savour from Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey, the sole teacher to see Matilda’s potential, largely because – like Matilda – she too has been cheated and denied in life.

Obviously the whole thing is building up to the moment when someone – you know who it is going to be – dares to stand up and say no to the former Olympic hammer-throwing champion Trunchbull, but the film is sorely devoid of tension as we wait for that moment to come.

It all ends extremely strongly – but not strongly enough to erase all memory of the fact that at times this film which should have been magical is actually quite dull.