MATILDA
1996 children’s comedy starring Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Mara Wilson. Directed by DeVito, based on the book by Roald Dahl.
Columbia TriStar Home Video; PG; 98 minutes; no suggested list price
“Matilda” is an unusual kids’ movie in that it requires an understanding of irony. Which, of course, casts this Roald Dahl tale’s status as a kids’ movie in question. If your kid gets the irony, it’s wonderful. If she doesn’t, you’ve got some explaining to do.
The story begins as the Wormwoods, Harry and Zinnia (Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman), bring their new baby, Matilda, home from the hospital. Harry swings the baby carrier as if it were a sack of clementines, then tosses it in the back of the station wagon, baby and all. This is not a loved child.
Matilda (big-eyed Mara Wilson) grows to childhood brilliant, sensitive, ironic and ignored. Her crooked, venal, cartoonish parents —-refuse — rather amusingly — to send her to school and force her to watch TV. So she raises herself, reading every library book, and eventually goes to school, Crunchem Hall — which is a horror, of course. It is run by the aptly named Agatha Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), who shotputs and tortures children in very Dahlian ways. But there are friends, too, and a dewy teacher named Miss Honey (Embeth Davitz). And there are Matilda’s developing psychokinetic powers, which she finds are tied to her anger.
Some of the movie devolves into John Hughes-style bash and crash, for which the under 12s may have more of an appetite than adults. But the acting by DeVito, Perlman and especially Wilson is quite appealing, and the themes — saving yourself, creating the family you don’t have, learning to use your anger — make this the rare film tolerable by child and parent alike.
And, actually, if you have the kind of child who gets the irony, who doesn’t understand how the Wormwoods could fail to love their child, that’s not so bad, is it?
KYRIE O’CONNOR
THE GREAT INDIAN RAILWAY
1995 documentary on railroad system in India, narrated by Linda Hunt
Columbia TriStar Home Video, 2 hours, no suggested list price
All aboard, train fetishists! The title of this video tells it all. “The Great Indian Railway” isn’t really about India or its people. Rather, it’s a too-exhaustive overview of the railway system in India.
Interesting subject matter the railway may be, but two hours of engines chugging along rural and urban tracks would be more absorbing if the filmmakers got off the train more often, and not just in already well-known places like Bombay, Calcutta and the Taj Mahal. What is needed are more stops in obscure places, to see how the towns traversed by the railway are affected by the trains. Often, backlit landscapes of dromedaries and turban-clad camel-drivers suffice in place of substantive stops on the route.
But for those interested in trains and only trains, the National Geographic production is a feast, a prettily photographed history and human story of this largest railway system in the world. Many jobs — from the supervisor of 250,000 of the system’s 1.6 million employees, to the “keyman” who whacks the bolts on the track with a sledgehammer — are described, as are accommodations on the trains. Some are microcosms of the big cities, with passengers crammed in and solicited by on-board beggars. Others are luxurious coaches on a par with the Orient Express.
Much time is spent on dull corporate stuff, like the commander viewing his workers’ performances and a locomotive beauty contest. Passengers and employees are interviewed over and over. But what of the villagers? They stare at the train in fascination, but few are asked what they think. We have to trust the filmmakers that the train is the lifeline of the nation. The nation — at least, those who can’t afford the train — isn’t asked.
Narrator Linda Hunt has a lovely voice; when the show gets boring you can close your eyes and listen to her majestic reading of the text. But you might fall asleep, unless your passion is trains.
SUSAN DUNNE
THE CABLE GUY
1996 dark comedy starring Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick
Columbia Tristar; 96 minutes; rated PG-13; no suggested list price
Jim Carrey’s at his darkest in this black comedy directed by Ben Stiller. A cable installer with a psychotic difference, he’s a lispy-voiced cross between Robert De Niro’s Max Cady in “Cape Fear” and Kevin Spacey’s Verbal Kint in “The Usual Suspects.”
As new cable customer Matthew Broderick discovers, there’s no end to his insidious, inspired lunacy. Carrey declares he’ll set Broderick up with anything — including free cable, giant TV screen, karaoke machine and monster speakers — if he’ll just be his pal. A pal that never leaves him alone, that is.
Carrey’s performance may be too edgy for some, but he’s as inventive and hilarious as ever, whether he’s throwing chicken skin on his face to do a “Silence of the Lambs” gag or screeching and twitching to a Jefferson Airplane song at a karaoke party full of senior citizens. Contains sexual situations, profanity and every kind of innuendo.
DESSON HOWE
