Welcome to the Dollhouse | 
 enlarge | Director: Todd Solondz
Actors: Heather Matarazzo, Christina Brucato, Victoria Davis, Christina Vidal, Siri Howard
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.96
Buy New: $15.99
You Save: $8.97 (36%)
New (48) Used (14) from $12.21
Avg. Customer Rating:  162 reviews
Sales Rank: 8027
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 88
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 2
Picture Format: Array
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: COLD82569D
ISBN: 0767827740
UPC: 043396825697
EAN: 9780767827744
ASIN: 0767827740
Theatrical Release Date: May 24, 1996
Release Date: August 3, 1999
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
This acclaimed comedy follows an 11-year-old geek who wants to be popular. Special features: full screen and widescreen versions subtitles: english french spanish talent files and theatrical trailer. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 06/24/2008 Run time: 87 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 157 more reviews...
 The story of a young Keith Olbermann, lol j/k September 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Welcome to the Dollhouse is a rare and refreshing dark comedy, it's hip, edgy, and all the kids will be talking about it when they're skateboarding and playing hackeysack.
Hey there, how do you like that hip, in your face, logline that I wrote for this movie? I think it's quite proactive. Kidding aside, it is for some reason quite a rare find, even if the subjects it addresses have been milked to death. Adolescent angst, nerds dealing with everyday life and trying to fit in, it's all really chartered territory.
Dollhouse however, presents it in such a dramatic way that it seems quite new; hey, for an hour an a half I WAS an ugly nerdy teenage girl!
While there's no agreed upon distinction between them all, there are many different kinds of misfits. There's nerds, dorks, dweebs, geeks, etc. Our heroine, Dawn, is the gawky outcast type with severe self-esteem and self-consciousness issues.
Dawn, aka Wienderdog, comes to the rescue when another nerd is being persecuted by some thugs, but even he doesn't show her any respect! It's pretty bad when even the nerds refute you.
Dawn's home life isn't much better as her sister, Missy, the perfect ballerina, pretty much has a run of the place. Dawn gets in trouble for calling her a l*sbo and her mother chews her out in a scene too uncomfortable for even the camera to look at.
While taking a test, Brandon, her chief tormentor, is copying from her paper and, as usual, she gets a detention because of it. The stress from this results in her getting a bad grade, which she whines about, resulting in her having to write an essay on the subject of dignity. Just another day in the life of Dawn Wiener.
Pushed to the breaking point, Dawn sports a Mohawk and takes a bunch of guns to school and begins to blow-away her tormentors...ooops, I think I'm getting my movie plots mixed up.
That night, over dinner, her uber-nerd older brother speaks brings up a fellow by the name of Steve, a hip rock and roller that's sure to make his silly garage band popular. And once again, Dawn gets punished because of her sister.
Plot point! Next day, Dawn sees Steve performing with the band and is quite smitten with him. Of course the prob is he's a few years her senior. In return for playing with the band, her bro teaches him computer science, so when he's over, Dawn has the chance to finally meet him and exchange pleasantries.
Steve is pretty much the center of her life for awhile as she goes around asking everyone about him. She gets to spend some quality time with him when her bro is late for their studying appointment. She gets to prepare him a snack and play the piano for him.
Things go south however when Steven quits the band over creative differences. To make things even worse, Brandon, that guy that always picks on her at school claims he is going to r*pe her after school and spends the entire day threatening her. She's saved from being r*ped however due to trashman-interuptus. But she gets a call that night from him, informing her that she'll get r*ped tomorrow instead.
She doesn't get r*ped incidentally, but she and Brandon do spend a heart-to-heart at some dump and they seem to bond a little, if only a little. She also gets her first kiss. When she gets home, her mom employs many tactics to get Dawn to tear down her clubhouse because they need the space for their anniversary party, but she doesn't give.
Even though he still bullies her, Brandon and Dawn are getting close and spending a lot of time together. Things blow-up however, when she informs him that she can't be her girlfriend because she has the hots for Steve.
At the anniversary party there are plenty of laughs to be had especially due to the song her bro wrote in honor of them which the band plays. Steve happens to be playing because he was paid $200, so Dawn takes her chance to approach him; but when she finds him he's making out with some hot girl his own age so she pretty much gives up on him. He leaves for New York shortly anyway.
When she gets home her mother informs her that she can't pick Missy up after practice and she's supposed to give Missy a note informing her of this, but she doesn't give it to her in order to get back at them. As a result Missy goes missing and ends up kidnapped.
In school previously, Brandon was arrested for selling drugs, so Dawn pays him a visit at his house. He's getting ready to run away because he doesn't want to go to reform school. She tells him she wants to be his girlfriend, but seeing as though he's going to New York, she can't g along with him. He jumps out the window and is never heard from again.
When Missy's tutu is found in New York, Dawn takes a bus there in order to find her. Missy turns up the next morning however and it turns out she was kidnapped by their neighbor, and she's no worse for the wear.
That pretty much wraps things up folks, she goes to Disneyworld on some gleeclub trip and it ends on the bus ride there. I guess she learns that she shouldn't be a nerd and grows as a person...actually I don't know what the heck she learns, movie's over folks!
 I'd prefer the dollhouse September 10, 2008
This film was touted as a fantastic dark comedy. I got the dark part. I'm still waiting on most of the comedy. It was very well acted and I'd even say finely directed... but something was missing. The plot just did not seem to go anywhere after such a strong setup and such stellar presentation of rich characters. I look forward to seeing where this ensemble goes from here, as everyone in it shone. I just wish the darkness could have shed some light on a plot.
Scathing, Wicked, Sad and Funny. May 26, 2008
No one does Black Comedy better than Todd Soldonz, and while this won't have one watching through their fingers like his follow-up "Happiness," but this surely will go down as the most-scathing portrayal of junior high ever filmed. Low-budget, but with writing and acting like this I don't need great lighting or a slick production. If you hated junior high, highly reccomended. If you were a Mean Girl or Boy, you will see how your actions affected others.
 A bit depressing to be a fun Dollhouse January 9, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Todd Solondz does it again and for a reason. We're introduce to Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), an awkward seventh grader who is put down by her peers because of her physical appearance. The taunting Dawn endures is extreme and does not come across as even slightly reminiscent of anything that happened in my high school, but this fact does not take away from the empathy we feel for her as she struggles through her daily life. As if school weren't bad enough, Dawn's home life doesn't leave much to be desired. Her older brother Mark (Matthew Faber), is the "king of the geeks". Her parents offer no support either. Dawn's other sibling, Missy (Daria Kalinina), is the darling of the family who can do no wrong. She simply flits around the house in her pink tu-tu and makes Dawn's life look hellish by comparison.
Dawn's life is further complicated by Brandon McCarthy (Brendan Sexton Jr.), the misunderstood juvenile who has taken a liking to her. At the beginning of their "relationship" he tells her he will rape her. This does not happen because of various circumstances, but Dawn ends up falling for this tough guy and eventually losing him when he runs away. Throughout the movie, it appears as if everyone in her life pours their derision upon anything she does, exposing all her weaknesses however carefully they might be hidden. Dawn, in turn, passes this on to the few people that she gets close to.
This was not a realistic depiction of the hells of junior high school. For one thing, girls would pick on other girls, but in no way, whatsoever, would any of them force another to sit on the crapper in front of another as a forms of bullying. These are 11-12 year olds? Uh uh. Maybe 4 years older that would happen, but no one at that age would succumb to a type of humiliation that gross and tasteless.
Our lead character is played brilliantly, and shows her determination in the face of endless adversity - in fact, the acting all around is excellent. But the movie denies the moments of redemption. Such a strong young warrior as Dawn would certainly have had some triumphs to share. While the movie is slow at times, it does pull on your heart string, and is definitely worth watching.
Welcome to the Dollhouse July 18, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A harrowingly accurate, darkly hilarious look at that time of life most of us would prefer to forget, Solondz's portrait of gawky pre-adolescence visits all the landmarks of childhood hell: peer abuse, sexual awkwardness, and the general sense that people are the source of all misery. Matarazzo is fantastic as the ostracized, alienated tween who suffers the insults and indignities of her peers with stoic resignation. Sexton ("Kids") also registers well as Dawn's cruel, glowering classmate. "Dollhouse" isn't for younger kids, but teens and grown-ups will appreciate its bitingly funny blend of pathos and punishment.
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