- ISBN13: 9780767827744
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A young teen with no support from family, friends and school falls in love with the unattainable coolest guy in high school at the same time she wins the sympathy and attention of the junior high school bully.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: R
Release Date: 3-AUG-1999
Media Type: DVDAmazon.com
What is junior high school but a strange, disorienting pastiche of black comedy, tragedy, soap opera, and (most of all) horror movie? Well, that pretty much describes Todd Solondz’s astonishingly honest and clear-sighted film, Welcome to the Dollhouse. Like Solondz’s even more controversial follow-up–the acclaimed and despised Happiness (1998)–Dollhouse unflinchingly looks deep into its characters’ souls (and their embarrassing desires, and their floundering sexuality) in ways that can be simultaneously disturbing and liberating, appalling and hilarious. Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) is a hapless seventh-grade geek whose cruel and contemptuous schoolmates have nicknamed her (what else?) “Wiener Dog.” Everything about Dawn is so awkward–the way she looks, talks, moves–that it’s no wonder other kids dump on her. They’re most likely so insecure about themselves that they’re terrified of the Wiener Dog they know lurks somewhere down inside themselves, too. So, the best social and psychological survival tactic is to distance themselves from Dawn by relentlessly reminding her of her “place” at the bottom of the junior-high pecking order. Solondz’s vision is hardly sentimental, and you wouldn’t even call it “compassionate,” but it is a moral vision: authentic, undiluted, and, in the end, understanding. –Jim Emerson
