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Welcome to the Dollhouse [VHS]

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4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

BEWARE SPOILERS!
This is a very funny comedy about the indomitable spirit of an 11-year-old junior high school girl, Dawn Wiener, played with geekish verve by Heather Matarazzo, who overcomes real life horrors the likes of which would make war heroes shutter. How would you like to be courted by a guy whose pick up line is "I'm going to rape you at three o'clock. Be there."? Or have a mother who splits your chocolate cake in front of your watering eyes into two pieces and adds them to the plates of your brother and sister? Or have your dream lover tell you he can't be a member of your Special People Club because it's "a club for retards"?

It gets worse. You're taunted daily by choruses of "Wiener Dog!" and "Lesbo freak!" and bullied at school by everybody including some teachers and the principal. And at home, your siblings tear down your club house. And when you're missing from home for a day and phone home, you're told to call back later, mom and your spoiled little sister are mugging for the TV cameras.

Ah, but Dawn can overcome the night. She turns the would-be rapist into a macho-posturing little boy who really only wants to be affectionate ("I make the first move!" he boasts) and demonstrates that no matter how hard they hit her, she'll be back tomorrow, undaunted.

Matarazzo does a great job, but she isn't alone. Brenden Sexton stands out as the posturing macho boy who loves her but can't admit it, as does Eric Mabius playing Steve Rogers, the self-absorbed high schooler/rock star wanna be (and Dawn's first love). The rest of the cast is also good, especially Victoria Davis in a bit part as the foul-mouthed, sexually ambiguous 12-year-old Lolita who corners Dawn in the bathroom. Incidentally that scene in which Lolita slyly tells Dawn "You didn't come in here to wash your hands," and insists that she do what she intended to do is just a great piece of pre adolescent camp. Another fine (and subtle) scene is when Dawn in her bedroom hears Steve Rogers sing for the first time (in the garage with her brother's "band"). The expression on her face, as she rises up enthralled and follows the sound, suggests someone in the throes of a first awakening. And I loved the bit where Dawn, after being told by one of Steve Rogers's ex-girl friends that they "finger-...(you-know-what)" one night and that was all, is inspired to demonstrate her finger work on the piano to Steve and then to show him her hands, fingers spread so he can see them. Of course he hasn't a clue to what she's thinking--and we're not too sure either!

Now some people may think there is some exaggeration here, and they're right. I mean, nobody wears a pirate's black eye patch after getting hit in the eye with a spit ball! And teachers, even bad ones, know better than to deliberately humiliate their students (although some do it unconsciously). Nonetheless, while the action may not be entirely realistic at times, its spirit is totally true. Just ask anybody who remembers junior high school. Which brings me to the question: how did director and script writer, Todd Solondz, get it so right? Did he take notes when he was still in junior high to use when he grew up? Did he steal his daughter's diary? Clearly somebody lived this script. I'm guessing that "Dawn" is "Todd" at least in spirit, and the striking capture of the psychology of the world of being twelve-years-old is due to his having been there and done that, "big time," as is written on Dawn's locker.

Whatever, this full color world of the middle child is an adorable, witty, psychologically honest, beautifully directed and edited, masterfully conceived entertainment, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, 1996, and sure to steal your heart.

Final irony: this is a movie for and about 12-year-olds (it would appear) yet it is rated "R" and so, in effect, junior high school life is not only "not suitable" for those under thirteen, they can't even view it!

Let me get this out of the way: in grade school, I was teased. A lot. In fact, it was so bad that even walking to school was an emotionally and physically painful experience. I can relate to every second of misery Dawn endures in the dynamite "Welcome to the Dollhouse." Most films like "Sixteen Candles" view high school as some insulated paradise. Not this film. Here, Dawn (played by Heather Matarazzo) is as socially inept as a pre-teen girl can be. She is subject to taunts, verbal assault, and vicious mind games at the hands of her classmates. Home life isn't much better; her parents blissfully ignore her while they shower attention on her cutsey younger sister, Missy. They give her attention only when they catch her doing something wrong, which seems to be most of the time. On top of this, she develops a crush for the teenage lead singer of her brother's band. Anyone who has experienced unrequieted love will find this subplot heartbreaking to watch. Despite the above, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" is a murderously funny movie to watch, even if you were a victim of grade school teasing. The performances are dead-on and it's one of my favorite movies of the 1990's.

When I first saw "Welcome to the Dollhouse" in the theater, I had mixed feelings about it. Although I found myself totally immersed in this offbeat story of a pathetic and persecuted girl, I initially questioned whether the movie really had a heart. What truly impressed me was Todd Solondz's frighteningly realistic depiction of junior high. As far as I'm concerned, it would be impossible for a filmmaker to exaggerate the torture of those hellish years, and Solondz really captured the experience to its full extent. What I considered somewhat unrealistic and offputting at the time was the way Dawn's family came across as so uncaring and even malicious. The film is obviously a black comedy, intended for uncomfortable laughs, but it seemed that these characters were so impossibly mean that they risked becoming ugly caricatures that you couldn't take seriously. I came away feeling that I had just witnessed something very intense and moving, yet I also felt the movie was overly preoccupied with its intent to shock and disturb. Since that initial viewing, I have purchased the video and watched it at least five times. With each viewing, I have found more and more truth and resonance in the bleak and hopeless world that Solondz constructed...and have become more and more convinced of its status as a minor masterpiece. Even though there is a lot of over-the-top venom and hostility thrown around in this film, there are also heartbreaking moments of raw and deeply-felt emotion that anyone who has ever wanted to be loved and accepted can surely relate to (in other words, the majority of humankind). One of the most poignant segments is when Dawn dreams that everyone in her life is declaring their love for her, only to wake up to her reality: she is alone and lying on a dirty city street. Then there's always the film's final and most emotionally devastating image of Dawn riding on a bus to Disneyland with her Glee Club. Those last few seconds always give me goosebumps. And don't forget the all-time best movie lines that have become staples among my circle of friends: "Tell your sister you love her!" and "At 3:00, you will be raped." I am now convinced that anyone who is unable to find some value in this movie is either 1) one of the lucky few who was generic enough to make it through those junior high years free of torment or 2) one of the mean and malicious people depicted in the movie who turned the rest of us into a bunch of Dawn Weiners.

The first time I saw this movie I loved it. It's hilarious. I can say that this movie is completely accurate in depicting the horrors that befall the unlucky, ugly, socially inept, nerds, etc junior high school kids. I say it's accurate because Heather is ME when I was in seventh grade. I was picked on mercilessly, called names (my 7th grade yearbook has PROOF of what my classmates called me) my family home life was beyond miserable. I had no one to talk to about anything. I got picked on in school and ceaselessly nagged and told how awful I was at home. And I am not making any of this up. And yes, I TOO am amazed at myself that I haven't ended up in jail or have committed suicide due to that year plus the years before and following.

I think the movie is hilarious. It is accurate and anyone who says it is not realistic, well you are dead wrong. I'm 31 now and somehow recovered from that year, but believe me, I still have scars. But I think I've recovered enough that I can laugh at this movie. I can laugh because I've been through it. I don't laugh because I'm mean, or don't have a heart, I laugh because of how true this movie is. And I laugh because I am happy that I wasn't the only one who went through the torture of 7th grade.

Oh, my nickname was Smelanie in case anyone was interested.

"Why do you hate me?" asks Dawn, a junior high outcast. "Because you're... ugly," replies her classmate, in one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in "Welcome to the Dollhouse". Heather Matarazzo plays Dawn Wiener, a junior high school student with no friends and parents who favour her younger sister Missy. Dawn is constantly harassed, especially by Brandon, a boy involved in drugs. After enduring what she does at school, Dawn comes home to her family - a family that could really care less about her. During the course of the film, I couldn't stop feeling sorry for Dawn because, like most people who can relate to this movie, I was sort of like Dawn when I was in school. Heather Matarazzo perfectly portrays Dawn in a way that most other actresses probably couldn't. She brings realism and honesty to the role and keeps the movie afloat during the last twenty minutes when it gets a bit silly. All in all, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" has been able to convey the realities of high school, unlike some recent movies and television shows. This is a MUST for anyone who didn't have the greatest time in school.

"Welcome to the Dollhouse" is basically a feature length episode of "Freaks and Geeks", with an amped-up rejection level and consequently an even more alienated main character (Dawn Wiener played by Heather Matarazzo). Then throw in a little of the "Jan Brady" middle child syndrome and give the thing a "Napoleon Dynamite" production design. What makes "Welcome to the Dollhouse" so extraordinary is that it is more about what is happening inside each viewer as they watch the film than about what is actually happening on the screen. Meaning that your reaction and the film's entertainment value will have a lot to do with your own experiences at that age or at least your sympathetic awareness of the difficulties that some of your classmates were experiencing. As someone has already said, if you aren't blown away by how realistic this is then you weren't unpopular enough.

While Dawn's 7th grade world and home life are surreal extremes which give the film a nice level of black comedy (the stuff written on her locker is hilarious), even the most extreme of these elements ring true. In part because Heather Matarazzo is so believable as Dawn and in part because our points of view at that age lacked real perspective. Meaning that we greatly magnify minor incidents of rejection and ridicule.

Children who first experience rejection in elementary school typically have a physical or basic hygiene issue. Dawn is not one of those children, she is just one of those who become targets for the first time in junior high school for more subtle differences. Since this is a new thing, she is as much mystified as hurt by this abuse. Not really understanding why it is happening to her, she blunders around in a quest to discover a logical reason for the rejection. At the same time she is dealing with all the physical changes happening to a seventh grade girl. But Dawn's rugged home life has made her self-sufficient and somewhat prepared her for the abuse she has to take in school.

Understandably Dawn responds with retaliation, a welcome change from the more typical portrayals of this type of character as a weak victim. Some of her responses are negative like smashing the tape of her parent's anniversary party, pushing away her only friend, and not relaying her mother's message to her little sister about a ride home. Others are positive, like stubbornly refusing to let the taunts from the crowd stop her from finishing her speech. Based on her refusal to apologize at the dinner table, Dawn would probably refuse to ingratiate herself with her classmates even if she knew how. Which puts most viewers even more solidly in her corner as we not only identify but begin to admire her.

All three of the Weiner children are excellent. Daria Kalinina does a great job as perfect little sister Missy and Director Todd Solondz uses her ballet talents to give sequences in the family home a great surreal quality. Josiah Trager gives older brother Mark a realistic portrayal. He is sympathetic to Dawn's daily situation, having gone through the same thing, but he seems to know that the best help he can give is to lead by example. His hardened survivor attitude and future thinking perspective is probably the best way for her to cope with the next five years.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

"Welcome to the Dollhouse" is one of the most hilarious films I've ever seen. It's about a dorky 7th grade girl, (which I was, now I'm a dorky 8TH grade girl) named Dawn Weiner who is bullied by her parents and her classmates. Everyone in her middle school seems to hate her, probably since they are afraid that they have the same qualities (or lack thereof) as Dawn. The catch of the film is the realistic portrayal of Middle School life. Brendan Sexton III plays that kid from over the tracks, yep we all know or knew that kid, the one who doesn't look washed or loved as much as he should and lives in that OTHER part of town and uses it to intimidate people so everyone's scared of him. He pretends to hate Dawn, happy to find someone more pathetic than himself, but really likes her and she likes him too, but she's already delved into an infatuation with her brother's hunky long-haired friend. It also shows the cruelty of everyone in Dawn's grade, especially the nasty popular girls who talk about parties she's not invited to and call her a "weener-dog." After enough abuse, Dawn starts to retaliate, sorta. She becomes mean. But after about five hours, she realizes that it doesn't work for her, and goes back to being herself, insecure, miserable, and harmless as a fly. Dawn is a pathetic, unpleasant character; she's not really friendly, athletic, or musical, but she does have a bit of intelligence, which lets her realize that the abuse she takes is not right. Heather Matarazzo should have gotten an oscar for this role. She becomes the character so well, that I could not think of her any other way except as Dawn, although there's no way she could possibly be this unpleasant in real life. There's a little bit of hope for Dawn Weiner, and a lot of hope for the career of Todd Solondz, a brilliant 32 year old man who has to be just a tad perverted to understand how grueling it is to be a 7th grade girl.

Well one thing is sure, Solondz will never be accused of making pandering, tear-jerking feel-good flicks---he seems to go out of his way to create the most uncomfortable, difficult to watch and painfully true to life films in contemporary American cinema.

"Welcome to the Dollhouse" could just as easily be titled "A 12-Year Old's Eternity in Hell." Set in a New Jersey suburb and its equally soul-killing junior high school, it's a mix of Byron's hostile universe and Kafka's vision of a world so absurdly and inexplicably cruel as to be both surreal and comic.

Hapless Dawn Wiener, who is routinely tormented by classmates not only for her name but her homely looks, glasses and clothing among other things, also has to come home to a classic dysfunctional middle class family whose parents dote on her younger sister and her older Bill-Gates-lookalike brother who's obsessed with getting into a good college. The slings and arrows come from all directions and at all times, though there is a surprising romantic development between Dawn and one of her schoolyard tormentors.

Like almost all of Solondz's work, there are no clear cut good and bad characters here, just REAL characters---all of them to a greater or lesser degree are self-absorbed freaks and none of them are blameless or innocent. In short, if you are the kind of viewer who HAS to find a "good" character to latch on to and identify with in order to watch a film, you will probably hate this film.

It abounds with humor so black and sharp and merciless you don't know whether to cry or laugh. I was able to squirm my way through the movie only by constantly looking away from the screen and reminding myself, "this is only a movie, this is not real, this is not real." Solondz's genius is such that I could only half-believe what I was saying.

So, have a stiff drink before you watch---or two or three of them!

Most high-school movies make school look like a paradise where the ugly girl is actually really beautiful, the sun shines every day, and all the dorks manage to fight back in the end. Unless, of course, they're the kind of dorks that you *should* laugh at. Then they probably fall over or something. Maybe if you watch enough of these kind of movies, you will start to believe that your own school days were similarly perfect. If you want to continue to believe this, don't watch "Welcome To The Dollhouse".

Dawn Wiener is the kind of girl who everyone feels sorry for when you watch her on screen, but if you were there would you really be willing to risk everything and sit next to her at lunch? Without the looks or personality to be popular, she is picked on mercilessly by students and teachers alike. Things aren't any better at home either - her parents obviously play favourites, her perfect adorable wannabe-ballerina sister Missy is loved by everyone and her older brother Mark thinks only of getting into a good college (telling Dawn that she might as well go to Disney World because it would look good on her college resume). Her only real friend and sole member of Dawn's 'Special People Club' is a boy named Ralphie, smaller than she is and nicknamed "faggot".

The movie deals with Dawn's huge crush, on the high school heart throb who is currently lead singer in her brother's band, realistically. He's fairly indifferent to her. If he notices her, he's kind to her in a distant sort of way. Most of the time he hardly sees her. Meanwhile Brandon, the boy who really does like her, bullies her to show that he doesn't.

If you don't want to get all your repressed memories stirred up again, it's probably not a good idea to see this film. If you do see it, beware. You get bitter and start writing reviews like this one.

I watched much of Welcome to the Dollhouse in a cold sweat. Even the funny parts (and there are some truly funny moments) had me squirming. See, it's all very familiar. No matter what walk of life you are from, if you went to Jr. High, you knew these characters. Maybe, God forbid, you were one of them.

Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) is cursed from the beginning: she's at that gawky, awkward, in-between age - after the bliss of young childhood but before the self-assurance of young adulthood. Called "Wiener Dog" by her tormentors (who comprise nearly every other student at her school), she displays amazing pluck in the face of adversity. She's no victim in the classic sense; if does not precisely fight back, she doesn't just take it lying down, either. But there is a sad desperation in her, too. This film does not condescend - what happens to her is often tragic, and not diminished by the smaller scale of 7th-grade life. In fact, the name-calling, the insults, the petty violations, and the coldness - they seem that much more harrowing because her shoulders are so narrow.

Welcome to the Dollhouse does not develop along the lines of a traditional plot. It is episodic, told in a series of small, ironic events that form a mosaic of life in the abyss of Jr. High School. It is woven together remarkably well, with painfully honest performances by the entire cast, a perceptive screenplay, and sly, restrained direction by Todd Solondz. There are no Big Moments, just lots of little ones that collectively add up.

Ultimately, this film is a Rorschach test: you get from it what you bring to it. If you had shallow, selfish parents like Dawn's, or if you were a tormentor, or a victim, or lived on the wrong side of the tracks, or the right side, there is a character who represents you; there is a moment that will unexpectedly reveal an awful truth about your own childhood.

The brightness at the center of this bitter, angry satire may be that the awful truth can, indeed, set you free.