Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

Plot

Seventh-grade is no fun. Especially for Dawn Weiner when everyone at school calls you 'Dog-Face' or 'Wiener-Dog.' Not to mention if your older brother is 'King of the Nerds' and your younger sister is a cutesy ballerina who gets you in trouble but is your parents' favorite. And that's just the beginning--her life seems to be falling apart when she faces rejection from the older guy in her brother's band that she has a crush on, her parents want to tear down her 'Special People's Club' clubhouse, and her sister is abducted.

Review

'Todd Solondz's faultless Sundance winner Welcome to the Dollhouse follows the travails of eleven-year-old Dawn Wiener, the pariah of junior high, who is forced to undergo a series of humiliations at the hands of her classmates, teachers and her family. But the greatest joys in Welcome to the Dollhouse are found in the small delineations of its script. It's The Simpsons as neo-realist tragedy.'

Review

'Welcome to the Dollhouse" owes as much to John Waters as it does "Kids." It's a low-budget, bad-Technicolor excursion into suburban lower-middle-class teenage junior- high-school girl angst. Being the first real film of this kind, it breaks quite a lot of ground before it degenerates into a ridiculous plot twist that doesn't work. Writer/Director Todd Solondz has fashioned a film that often fails in it's depiction of reality when plot is exposed.'

Clips

The band rehearsal scene (1:23)

The Dawn and Steve scene (1:58)

The toilets scene (1:20)

Todd Solondz interviewed about Dollhouse

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