Welcome to the Dollhouse
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Movie Reviews of Welcome to the Dollhouse
Movie Review: Disturbing but funny, even it makes you feel guilty
Summary: 5 Stars
Welcome to the Dollhouse is a lot like the recent Napoleon Dynamite. Both have the cast decked out in hideous wardrobes with horrid 1970's-looking environments. Both are about high-school oddballs who face torment from the shallow popular kids. But while Napoleon Dynamite is rather light-hearted, WTTD is really dark and will make you cringe with guilt and quite often make you feel really uncomfortable. In fact, it has more in common with a true horror movie than it does a dark comedy.
Heather Matarazzazzazzo plays the unfortunately surnamed Dawn Weiner, a girl blessed with strange looks (meh-I like her) and an uncaring ignorant family. E-ver-y-one around her is UN-BEE-LEEV-ABLY cruel to her in every way possible. And rage unconfronted continues forever. As are her bullies bullied themselves, Dawn goes on to bully others etc. It subtle idiosyncrasies like this that might go unnoticed in single viewings.
Other characters are quite well drawn, especially Brandon, who didn't get enough screen time. His relationship with Dawn is quite intriguing. Most would think he's using her as a way of making himself feel better but when you think about it that's probably not entirely true. Perhaps Brandon likes Dawn because she isn't nasty to him like Cookie and the other girls were. She wasn't tarting all over him like Lolita in the library and she stood up to Brandon for punching Troy. Also Brandon apologises to her for vandalising her locker and the sad looks he gives her in the library appear to be a look of longing and wanting.
Ironically, the biggest monster in the film is Dawn's own mother. She's a beast of a woman, completely ignorant of Dawn's needs and infatuated with her other younger daughter and far too supportive of her arrogant older brother (his character is further developed in Todd Solondz's 2004 movie Palindromes, played by the same actor). Any scene with her will make you grit your teeth and shake your head no doubt.
Too bad Heather Matarazzazzazzo is married (err...to another woman-sigh...no chance for me now) cause she's actually quite attractive in real life. Though I must say again her wardrobe in this film is 'EEK' Seriously, you'll be questioning Dawn's fashion sense. But then she's probably only wearing what her mother buys for her and wants her to be seen in.
If this movie impresses you then I dare you to check out Todd Solondz's follow-up Happiness. Now THERE is a film to dark and so unbelievably horrifying you'll be watching it through the gaps between your fingers and biting your lip in an effort to restrain the guilty laughter. But on it's own, WTTD is a great movie. Just don't show it to kids if your not down with frank portrayal of teen sexuality or bad language. Or do show them as a lesson in how NOT to treat people.
The DVD is in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby 2.0 sound. The print is a little beat up with track lines and speckles but it doesn't distract too much. There are no extras but I don't care.
Movie Review: Do you take your humor black?
Summary: 5 Stars
Another former (I said FORMER! Did you hear me?) nerd checking in. I just watched this movie last night, and it may very well be my favorite film ever. Sometimes art is truer than fact, and "Dollhouse", while certainly not factual, rings very, very true.
Is this film awful? Yes. Is it cruel? Yes. Is it hopeless? Yes. Is it brilliant and funny and bizarrely resassuring? Yes. Reading the other reviews here, I'm a little worried I'm the meanest person alive, because I thought this movie was incredibly funny. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. Dawn's suffering, and the suffering she inflicts on others, is completely unacceptable, yet it happens every day. What can you do besides laugh? Crying won't do any good either.
As much as I loved it, "Dollhouse" is definitely not for everyone. Here is a hypothetical question: is there some tiny part of you that finds the thought of a nerdy girl murdering her darling little sister with a hammer funny? No? Then stay far away from this film.
I hestitate to cover the actual details of the plot, first because they've been covered extensively already, and second because I think you should go into this movie cold if at all possible. In fact, stop reading this review and go see the movie immediately.
Still here? Okay. I will say that I sympathized with Dawn's sister, as much as I also sympathized with Dawn's dislike. Solondz is both gentle and merciless with his characters. You aren't protected from anyone's ugly moments, but at the same time, you know that they are doing their best, and you might very well do the same thing in their position.
The film, while almost totally without hope, still manages to be oddly reassuring. You can definitely see why Dawn is an outcast - she wears huge glasses with clothes a thrift shop would turn its nose up at, and has an overbite the size of Alaska. But at the same time, you can see that she's not ugly or worthless, the way adolescents often feel they are (and are often told they are). She just hasn't grown into herself yet.
I also strongly identified how surreal and adrift Dawn's experience was. Her peers are cruel beyond all reason (and yet, it's happening), and the adults don't have the faintest idea what's going on, even when she tries to enlist their help. The movie is completely unpredictable, which adds to the sense of rudderlessness. Dawn more or less takes everything in stride because anything, no matter how good or bad, seems possible. Becoming popular? Rape? DisneyWorld? It doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense, she is still living it.
The ending is awful, but unfortunately very true. That's all I'm going to say. See for yourself!
Movie Review: Welcome To Your Ugly Adolescent Past...
Summary: 5 Stars
When this movie was shot in the summer of '94, I was probably the exact same age as the little sister Missy. Everything about this movie screams "90s" from the grunge esque wardrobe of many of the boys, to the outdated clunky computers. Even though most people don't go through with what Dawn did, I think most people can still relate a little bit to Dawn in some way. Especially if you were 'uncool' or felt hopelessly awkward. I myself, was (and still is) extremely shy, and this made it difficult for me to communicate and understand most of the kids at my school. This movie is basically a bittersweet comedy, it's funny at the same time it is hopelessly depressing. Maybe it's so depressing because it rings so true to life, as most of us don't want to face the reality of our adolescent years. We let Hollywood dictate what we think happened, as presented to us in movies like 'American Pie' and 'She's All That' so we end up thinking, "Oh that wasn't so bad afterall, was it?" One interesting thing about Welcome to the Dollhouse is it seems to explore why certain people act the way they do. Take the two main characters for instance. Why do bullies like Brandon act the way they do? Is it because they come from a broken family and they weren't shown enough love and affection? Why exactly did he act so extremely cruel to Dawn, but also acted like he had nice intentions? Dawn's character could be another mystery to people. After she first got away from being 'raped' why did she suddenly go back the next time and act so submissive? Is a part of her a bit of a masochist due to the way she is treated at school? Or is it because she feels so lonely herself, and just wants to feel wanted, even if it is in the most horrible way possible? It's a movie that kids can relate to, but I don't think until you're older can you ever really 'get it'. You see one side presented to the story, but there seems to be a whole other psychological aspect to it lurking underneath as well.Movie Review: another uncomfortable masterpiece from Solondz...
Summary: 5 Stars
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!
Movie Review: This is real life
Summary: 5 Stars
Think `Carrie'. Think her at school but without her telekinetic powers: this is Dawn, the protagonist of anti-fairy tale movie, `Wellcome To The Dollhouse", directed by Todd Solondz .For Dawn, High School is hell. She has no friends, she is neither cute, nor popular. Everybody makes fun of her. One boy threatens to rape her, he says "Be here at 3", and she is there, but he is not interested in her any more. At home, things are not very different. Her parents don't care about her. They got eyes only for her little sister, who is too polite, too smart, too cute -- too hatefull -- and for her older brother, a kind of genius who is only worried about his curriculum and his stupid nerd band. Even when she falls in love, we have to addmit, she is ignored either.
That is Dawn's world. And she doesn't care about it. Nor Solondz. He doesn't want to give us a lecture, saying to love everybody, even the strange girl. Moreover, his work says "This is life, whether you like it or not!" And this a concept that he explored much more in his lattest movies `Happiness' (1998) and `Storytelling'(2002). He has a special interest in the bizarre without making it grotesque. His films are not made to laugh out loud, they make you give pale smilles.
It seems to me that the only one who have any good feeling for Dawn is the audience. It is impossible not to feel tempted to `get inside' the movie, shake her and say "Wake up, girl! They don't like you. Forget about them." But nobody does it. She has to move on living, despite all the limitations of her life.
Who says that had never met someone like Dawn at school --or anywhere else-- is lying! She is the kind of person who is around everywhere. And almost everybody ignores them. Everybody but Todd Solondz --who himself looks very alike this kind of person-- and made a wonderful movie about his strange and peculiar universe.