Welcome to the Dollhouse

This article is about the 1995 film. For the Danity Kane album, see Welcome to the Dollhouse (album).

Welcome to the Dollhouse
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Todd Solondz
Produced by	Todd Solondz
Written by	Todd Solondz
Starring	Heather Matarazzo Matthew Faber Daria Kalinina Brendon Sexton Jr. Eric Mabius
Music by	Jill Wisoff
Cinematography	Randy Drummond
Editing by	Alan Oxman
Studio	Suburban Pictures
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s)	September 10, 1995 (1995-09-10) (TIFF) May 24, 1996 (1996-05-24)
Running time	87 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$800,000
Box office	$4,569,019

Welcome to the Dollhouse is a 1995 American independent coming of age dark comedy. An independent film, it launched the careers of Todd Solondz and Heather Matarazzo.

Plot

Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) is a shy, unattractive, unpopular 7th grader in a middle-class suburban community in New Jersey. Her older brother, Mark (Matthew Faber), is a nerdy high school student who plays clarinet in a garage band and shuns girls in order to prepare for college. Dawn's younger sister, Missy (Daria Kalinina), is a pretty little girl who pesters her and dances happily in a tutu. Their mother (Angela Pietropinto) is a shrewish woman who dotes on Missy and always sides with her in disputes with Dawn. Dawn's only friend is an effeminate fifth-grade boy named Ralphy (Dimitri Iervolino), with whom she shares a dilapidated clubhouse in her backyard.

Dawn's life in junior high is miserable: Her classmates call her names and cover her locker with derisive graffiti, the cheerleaders call her a lesbian, a teacher unfairly keeps her after school, another girl forces her to use the toilet while the girl watches, and she is threatened with rape by a bully named Brandon McCarthy (Brendan Sexton, Jr.), who has almost as much trouble socializing as she does. Her attempts to take out her frustrations only get her into trouble: At home, her mother punishes her for calling Missy a lesbian and refusing to be nice to her; at school, she accidentally hits a teacher in the eye with a spitball. Brandon's first attempt to rape Dawn fails, but he orders her to meet him again. After she presents herself to him and he takes her to an abandoned field, he starts an earnest conversation and only kisses her, even though she is obviously willing. Meanwhile, Mark's band is joined by Steve Rodgers (Eric Mabius), a cool, handsome boy who intends to become a rock star. Dawn immediately falls for him, and she decides to pursue him romantically after he spends some time with her, even though one of his former girlfriends explained to her that she has no chance.

As the film continues, Dawn and Brandon treat each other ambivalently: He bonds with her in her clubhouse only after another girl rejects him, and Dawn pursues him only after Steve rejects her. Toward the end of the film, Brandon is expelled from school for suspected drug dealing and, after kissing Dawn, runs away to avoid being sent to military school. After angrily rejecting Ralphy, Dawn is left with no friends at all. Meanwhile, the next occasion of Dawn's embarrassment is a lawn party to celebrate her parents' anniversary. When she refuses to tear down her clubhouse to make room for the party, her mother has Mark and Missy destroy it and gives them her share of a chocolate cake. At the party, Steve plays with Missy and Missy pushes Dawn into a kiddie pool. That evening, the family watches a videotape of the party, laughing when Dawn falls into the water; later that night, Dawn smashes the tape to pieces and briefly brandishes her hammer over Missy as she sleeps to bludgeon her to death. But Dawn cannot bring herself to commit murder and instead walks away and goes to bed.

Dawn's ultimate disaster occurs when her father's car breaks down and her mother has to pick him up. Dawn is to tell Missy to find a ride home from ballet class while their mother is away. However, Missy argues with Dawn, who retaliates by not telling her, with the result that Missy is kidnapped. When Missy's tutu is found in Times Square, Dawn goes to New York City hoping to find Missy and become a hero to make her difficult parents notice and respect her. After a full day and night of searching fruitlessly for Missy, Dawn phones home to check up on what is going on and Mark tells her that Missy has been found by the police after she was abducted by a pedophile neighbor. Dawn returns home dejected and sees that her mother was too preoccupied with Missy's traumatic kidnapping ordeal to even notice Dawn's absence. After this, Dawn's classmates make fun of her as she gives a thank you speech in the assembly hall, and Mark offers her no hope of a better life until high school. Dawn is relieved that summer is now here and that her painful ordeal at school is over... at least for the next three months. Afterwards, Dawn's mental state takes a further blow when Mark offers her no hope of a better life until high school... which according to him is will not be much better.

A little later, Dawn makes a half-hearted attempt to be friendly towards Missy as she is sitting on a lawn chair in the back yard sipping lemonade. Missy, for no clear reason, splashes her glass of lemonade into Dawn's face, and laughs. Their mother walks in and incredibly, she too laughs along with Missy at what she did to Dawn, who responds by walking away and her mother asks the angry and humiliated Dawn at what is her problem Dawn, aware that her mother will never believe that the sociopath-in-training Missy splashed her drink in her face for no reason, refuses to say anything. By the end of the movie, Dawn finds herself literally back where she started... only worse. She is still unpopular and unattractive. Her parents have gone from mistreating and neglecting her to ignoring her completely in favor for Missy's abduction (but at least to Dawn's credit, her parents never figure out that she was indirectly responsible for Missy kidnapping by withholding information from her that led to Missy being abducted in the first place).

Rather then counting down the long summer days to go back to school for 8th grade (and thus endure another hellish year of bullying and abuse), Dawn decides to get away from her home life by signing herself up for a month-long school summer trip to Florida's Walt Disney World. Her self-involved parents are still too pre-occupied with their own lives to approve of Dawn's permission to leave for the summer, and do not even notice her packing up to leave, much less say "goodbye" to her. (Dawn's parents do not notice, or seem to care, when Dawn is absent from the dinner table that evening). The final scene shows Dawn sitting anonymously among her other classmates on the school bus as she obediently joins other students singing the school anthem during the field trip to Florida as she sorrowly looks out the bus window to ponder her uncertain future.

Cast

• Heather Matarazzo as Dawn Wiener
• Matthew Faber as Mark Wiener
• Daria Kalinina as Missy Wiener
• Brendan Sexton, Jr. as Brandon McCarthy
• Eric Mabius as Steve
• Victoria Davis as Lolita
• Christina Brucato as Cookie
• Christina Vidal as Cynthia
• Amouris Rainey as Darla
• Siri Howard as Chrissy
• Telly Pontidis as Jed
• Herbie Duarte as Lance
• Jared Solano as Neko
• Scott Coogan as Troy
• Josiah Trager as Kenny
• Ken Leung as Barry
• Dimitri Iervolino as Ralphy
• Rica Martens as Mrs. Grissom

Critical acclaim

The film was a surprise success, considering it was a relatively low budget, independently produced film. It garnered critical praise for its nail biting view of a preteen outcast, and won the Grand Jury Prize for best dramatic feature at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Critic Roger Ebert has been vocal about his love for the film, giving it four stars out of four and placing it at number five on his "Best of 1996" list.

The film currently holds an 90% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

References to the film

• In 2004, Solondz made a sequel, Palindromes, which begins with the words "In Loving Memory of Dawn Wiener," and opens with her funeral, revealing that Dawn went to college, became pregnant, gained a lot of weight and committed suicide.

External links

• Welcome to the Dollhouse at the Internet Movie Database
• Welcome to the Dollhouse at AllRovi
• Welcome to the Dollhouse at Box Office Mojo
• Welcome to the Dollhouse at Rotten Tomatoes
• Welcome to the Dollhouse at Metacritic

Awards
Preceded by The Brothers McMullen	Sundance Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic 1996	Succeeded by Sunday