Matilda corrections

When Harry puts baby Matilda in the back of the car, in her baby car-seat, in one shot she is wrapped in a pink blanket with blue straps over her, but under the blanket. Yet when the car jerks, the blue strap is suddenly over the blanket. See more...

Trivia

The film is dedicated to Suzie Wilson, the mother of the actress who plays Matilda, Mara Wilson. Suzie Wilson died of breast cancer during the filming of Matilda. The adult actors in the film commended Mara for carrying on with the film after such a tragic loss. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

Matilda (1996) - 26 corrections

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. As such, any aggressive/abusive corrections (and I get quite a few) written as if they're comments I've made myself will be ignored. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click the edit icon under an entry, then choose "correct entry". Some entries have "duplicated entry" after them - these are entries which were already listed on the main page, but were submitted again. I occasionally leave these online for a while, just in case they were moved in error, so don't worry about pointing them out to me.

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When Matilda's father is telling the family the amount of money he made in one day and Matilda says the answer before anyone else, she is wrong. Matilda says the answer is $10,265. The first car was sold for $1,158, the second for $2,269, the third for $999, and the fourth was sold for $7,839. Add that all up and you'll get $12,265, the real answer. [He's asking what PROFIT he made, so you have to subtract what he PAID for those cars: $320 for the first, $512 for the second, $68 for the third and $1100 for the fourth. That adds up to $2000. $12,265 - $2000 = $10,265. Matilda was right.]

Right at the beginning of the movie, you can see that the baby Matilda has brown eyes but later in the film you can see that they have changed to a blue-green colour. (This is visible when she is writing the message on the blackboard). [A person's eye color often changes from infancy to childhood (and sometimes again from childhood to adulthood). It is usually from blueish hues to darker ones, but the opposite is not unheard of, as has apparently happened here.]

Corrected by Phixius

When Miss Trunchbull calls all of the children to the assembly, the tannoy speaker bounces out. The problem is, it doesn't match with what Miss Trunchbull is saying. [It's only off by a split second. In reality it takes a split second after the person talks for the vibration to hit the speaker so this isn't a mistake at all.]

When Zinnia signs the adoption papers she signs it three times. But, when Harry signs, he only signs them twice. [More of a character mistake on Harry's behalf.]

Corrected by Hamster

When Amanda gets thrown over the fence, she gets up and shakes herself. She says, "Brrrrrrrr", however the sound is delayed. [We don't get a close up of Amanda's face. The camera is in a bit of a distance and people don't open their mouths when they say Brrrrr. There is no proof the sound was delayed.]

In the flashback where Matilda is being locked in the chokie, Miss Tunchbull says, "the apple never rots far from the tree". In the flashback, she says it when Matilda is in the chokie, but in 'reality' Miss Trunchbull says it while on the way to the chokie. [This was a memory. Matilda's memory doesn't have to be 100% accurate to what actually happened.]

When Matilda reads 'Moby Dick' at the end of the film, she opens the book and turns one page then begins to read. A book has at least 3-5 pages at the start to say who published it, who it was for, etc. [Two likely possibilities: Either she turned more than one page, and they just stuck together; or this book is part of a series/compilation of classic literature, and the 3-5 pages worth of information that would normally appear in each book appears in only the first or last book of this series.]

Corrected by Phixius

When Matilda is beginning to learn her powers, she has difficulty slamming the door in her father's face. When she finally does manage it, notice how easily she manages to lock the door. [Because she opened the flood gate, so to speak, by getting the door to slam.]

Corrected by Phixius

Matilda has alot of books in her small red wagon. Usually libraries give you a limit to how may books you can get out. [Matilda's wagon is full of big books, and in each shot I'd say she has around 20, however at my local library, we can get up to 35 books out at a time. As we never find out, Matilda's library might allow a high number of books to be borrowed at once.]

Corrected by Hamster

When Matilda first realises her powers, she dances in the lounge and makes cards, counters and other objects fly around. When she finishes, she sits on the couch, moves her hands in a motion, signaling she wants the curtains open. Nothing happens. Then she turns off the radio, does the same hand motion and the curtains open, so why didn't they open before? [When she signalled to stop the first time, she was telling the pack of cards/counters to stop flying around, then the second time, she does another motion signaling the curtains to open.]

Corrected by Hamster

In the part where the piece of chalk floats and writes on the board - you can see a wire all the time. [The special featurette explains how they did this scene - they wrote the letters the chalk is going to write backwards on the wall behind the chalkboard. They then used a strong magnet and traced these words - thus giving the effect that the chalk is floating and writing the words on the board the correct way. No wires were used in the making of this scene.]

Corrected by Hamster

When Matilda impresses everyone with 13 times 379, Lavender says "wow". But you will notice that there's static around her voice. [That wasn't a problem with the sound, that was Lavender's voice.]

In the newt scene, before Miss Trunchbull says "I am God" the newt is climbing up the front of the glass. Just before it tips over, the newt is climbing up the left hand side of the glass. [This is delibirate, to show Matildas power.]

When Matilda pulls the adoption papers out of her bag, they have her parents' names typed on them below the signature lines. Now if she got the papers out of a book at the library, like she says, how would they have her parents' names typed on them? She hasn't written the names herself, so how did they get there? [Because she photocopied the papers and typed the names in herself. She never says that the papers were still exactly as they were in the book. SHe has had them for a long time. She has had plenty of time to prepare them for this eventuality.]

Corrected by Garlonuss

After Matilda takes out her waffles and goes to check on her dad the toaster moves to another table. [The toaster never moves to another table, I've watched this over and over and it is always at the end of the long yellow counter.]

Corrected by Hamster

On Matilda's first day at school, she gets out of the car and is holding her blue cardigan and school notebook in her arms, which she is still carrying as she enters the gate, but when the door opens and Miss Trunchbull comes out and the camera goes back to Matilda she isn't holding anything. [The scene starts with Matilda carrying her book and sweater to the school gates. It then cuts and the next shot is Matilda standing in the middle of the playground, surrounded by children playing. A big pile of bags, coats, sweaters, books etc. is visible as Matilda enters the school gates. Matilda most likely put her sweater and book down between the timespan of the two shots, then walked off into the playground with anticipation of meeting friends. The two shots are not consecutive, so it isn't a mistake.]

Corrected by Hamster

When Matilda makes the cup float for her teacher, you can see wires connected to it. [According to the special effects featurette on the DVD, the levitating pitcher scene was done by having the pitcher on a long pole. There was a hole in the table, and the pole was attached to the pitcher, then when it was time to make it float a crewmember would push the pole higher to make the pitcher "float" up. The pole was then erased by computers in post-production. No wires were used in this scene.]

Corrected by Hamster

When Matilda and her family are in the living room all watching TV you can see the mother is not wearing sunglasses and then she is, and why would she be wearing them anyway? [In the TV scene she clearly puts her sunglasses on, they don't just "appear." The reason why she wears them isn't clear, but the family sure is weird, and the fact she wears sunglasses isn't a mistake, as the sunglasses are obviously meant to be worn by her, because they are so blatant.]

Corrected by Hamster

In the scene when Harry Wormwood is at his car dealership he uses a two way drill to turn back the numbers on the odometer. However, he tells his son to watch the speedometer. [Harry is hardly the most intelligent person, is he. This is more of a character mistake reflecting Harry's knowledge, than a movie mistake.]

Corrected by Hamster

Amanda loses her glasses when she is being slung around. Then, when she is up in the air, they are back on. [It does seem logical for her to lose her glasses but I watched a couple of times her glasses stay on the entire time.]

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