Goofs for
Matilda (1996)

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• Continuity: Chalk "X" on the blackboard changes to a straight line.
  
  
• Continuity: The FBI agent's camcorder opens twice.
  
  
• Continuity: Magnus' picture faces into the room at first then later faces toward the window when Matilda gets the doll.
  
  

• Continuity: When Matilda first arrives at school, she has a sweater on over her dress, and a school journal in her hand. In the next shot, when Ms. Trunchbull comes out, the sweater and the journal are gone. Later when Matilda is inside the classroom, the sweater is still gone, but the journal reappears. Then when she gets home from school the sweater is back on.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: When Lavender is levitated, the wires are visible as she descends (pan and scan version).
  
  
• Continuity: The icing on Matilda's cake at "The Ritz" jumps about between shots.
  
  
• Continuity: The position of the lid on the chocolate box changes between shots (after it is replaced in a hurry as Trunchbull enters the house).
  
  
• Continuity: We see the chandelier in the foyer of Miss Honey's house fall to the floor in one shot while Miss Trunchbull is chasing our two heroes, but minutes later it's hung up again.
  
  
• Continuity: The Trunchbull's cake has two layers in some shots and three layers in others.
  
  
• Continuity: The water level in the glass that holds the newt.
  
  
• Continuity: Right before the scene with the Newt and the Trunchbull, Lavender is clearly seen filling the pitcher with water before dumping the entire contents of the jar (including the newt) into the pitcher as well. Later on, the Trunchbull pours herself a glass of water, and apparently empties the pitcher, but the glass is smaller than the jar that originally held the newt.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Matilda levitates the water pitcher to show Miss Honey her powers, the shadow of the water pitcher is still where it should be if it were sitting on the tabletop.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Before the spoon goes in Matilda's mouth, a rod is seen sticking out of the one end, clearly holding it up. (full frame only)
  
  
• Continuity: When Matilda arrives at school for the first time, the principal is coming out of the door. The shadow of the kids walking back emphasizes their fear. In the next shot the feet of the principal and some kids are shown: the ground is fully shadowed though.
  
  
• Continuity: After cutting Harry's hat off, Zinna sits down to watch TV and puts her sunglasses on twice.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Matilda is levitating the doll out of the window she is sitting on the roof and the shingles are obviously made of some type of soft material because they give way when she is moving about them.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Matilda grabs the floating tape from the cop's open recorder, the sound of her hand touching the tape and the action of her actually grasping it do not match.
  
  
• Continuity: When Zinnia is trying to cut the hat off of Harry's head, she walks around to cut the hat from behind Harry and places her hand on it, which makes the hat move while it is "still glued on".
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Ms. Trunchbull puts Matilda in the chokie she bumps into one of the nails sticking through the door and it shakes like it's rubber.
  
  
• Continuity: When Harry is gluing the bumper back on the car, in the first shot he smears the glue on. But in the next the glue is perfectly even.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Zinna is coloring her hair, you can see that there's no hair dye in the bottle.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Amanda is thrown over the fence, she slides along the ground then stands up and shakes herself but the sound comes seconds later.
  
  
• Continuity: At the beginning of the scene when Harry comes home and asks Michael to get a pen and paper to take down his profits for the day, before they get to the table there is a full shot of the table and no one is sitting at it. A different angle shows Matilda is sitting at the end of the table which was empty a second earlier.
  
  
• Continuity: While Matilda cooks the pancakes, they look burnt. As they land on the plates (after being cooked), they look fine and light-coloured.
  
  
• Continuity: When we first see baby Matilda she has brown eyes. But when Mara Wilson takes over she has gray eyes.
  
  
• Continuity: The position of Miss Honey's hair when she enters Ms. Trunchbull's office, suggesting that Matilda takes older or advanced classes.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the black cat is chasing Miss Trunchball you can hear a meowing sound, but the cat isn't opening its mouth.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Miss Trunchbull throws the newt onto a ceiling light, the close-up of it clearly shows it to be made of rubber. But when it falls into a pupils hands, it’s a real newt again.
  
  
• Continuity: When Matilda sneaks into her parents room there is a dark striped jacket hanging on a clothes tree. After she leaves the room and Mr. Wormwood calls Mike into the room he lifts the clothes tree but the jacket is now yellow and black hounds-tooth material.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: In the assembly hall when Bruce Bogtrotter is walking up to the front of the room Lavender turns to Matilda to say "He lives on my block," Matilda says something in return but there is no sound.
  
  
• Continuity: On Matilda's first day of school, in the car and walking through the gates, she is holding a book. When Matilda gets into the playground she is no longer holding it.
  
  

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: SPOILER: At the end of the film, Matilda's family moves to Guam to escape the FBI. That wouldn't do much good, since Guam is a U.S. territory and the FBI has jurisdiction there. In some way, though, it might not be considered a mistake, since the movie establishes early on that Harry and Zinnia aren't the brightest bulbs in the box. Maybe they didn't know they'd still get caught. Since Matilda never sees them again, she might think they got away, like the narrator says.
  
  

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