Welcome to the Dollhouse

The plot revolves around the spectacularly unpopular Dawn Wiener (well played by 12-year-old Heather Matarazzo). Known around Benjamin Franklin Junior High as "Wiener Dog", Dawn is shunned and tormented throughout the film. If popularity were a ladder, Dawn would be near the botton rung. She's not even popular in her own family, her irritatingly cute kid sister grabbing all the attention. I really liked the way the film showed there are those who are even lower on the pecking order and how Dawn, herself, is not above lobbing insults.

"Welcome to the Dollhouse" doesn't pretent to be absolutely realistic. Some scenes are over-the-top. But the movie is universally appealing, I believe, touching memories that are shared by many of us.

I read where New Yorker magazine described the film as "Hateful". I disagree and would describe the movie as a comedy, but a sad and brutal one.

Perhaps it's because as some reviewers here suggest, we all have our own "inner Dawn Wiener." It's easy to identify with this ungainly, hopelessly unpopular teenager--with the awful barrettes and clothes, a brainy older brother, and pertly adorable younger sister. We can all cop to that one pretty much. (If you identify at all with the characters in HAPPINESS, you probably wouldn't want to admit it.) But I honestly don't think that Solondz' intent was to get viewers in touch with their "inner adolescent." He's going after something bigger than that--and more sinister too.

I guess it shouldn't be so surprising that many reviewers here identify with Dawn, but when they start calling the film "realistic," you have to wonder. If there was ever a film that was an exercise in pop SURrealism, this is it.
As a teen alienation flick, I'd rate it right up there with GHOST WORLD, and like that film, it has a distorted, fun-house-mirror quality--that is, I'll grant you, simultaneously more and less real that mere realism. (I guess that's the essence of SURREALISM). Dawn's parents, for example, are little more than cartoon figures--at least until her father has a near nervous breakdown.

And doesn't that reflect a teenage sense of reality even better than sheer realism, after all? Your average teen doesn't see his or her parents as full-fledged human beings. They're way too busy with their own boiling over emotions. Until their parents humanity hits them in the face, kids see them through the looking glass, darkly--if at all.

Which is not to say that either of Dawn's parents becomes remotely sympathetic. Interesting too how in the end, Dawn's two almost-boyfriends have run away to the city. Dawn kinda sorta runs away herself trying to track downr her kidnapped little sister. Seems like anyone with a lick of sense gets out of that town.