Miss Honey makes millennials wistful. She was, for many of us, our formative film crush. Embeth Davidtz’s performance, in Danny DeVito’s big-hearted 1996 Matilda adaptation, made us wonder why we couldn’t all be respected as child geniuses by a kindly teacher. As I watched Lashana Lynch play the part for a new generation, I imagined Gen Alpha in 20 years’ time, reflecting fondly on how she – and her wardrobe of sundresses and cardigans – marked the very first time they fell in love.
Lynch’s performance best embodies, in a way, what this latest Matilda is and strives to be: something warm and familiar. Based on the Royal Shakespeare Company’s hit musical, it has no desire to surpass DeVito’s version; it’s content to sit beside it. There’s no attempt to improve on the Tony-winning stage adaptation’s source material, written by Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly; it only wants to translate its spirit faithfully. Realistically, I can’t imagine any other way it could work. There’s too much history and too much childhood nostalgia from the book, film, and subsequent musical weighted onto each beat of the story. The Matilda we get here, then – formally titled Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical – is a frothy, whimsical delight that encompasses every expectation we were bound to have already placed on it. It’s intrinsically British enough that I half expect it to be soon absorbed into the Paddington cinematic universe.
