Review of Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996) by Bruno B — 11 Aug 2010

Let me preface this review by saying that I gave this film a high percentage because of its cinematic achievements. It is a profound and well constructed piece of cinema. That being said, it is not entertaining, let alone enjoyable, to watch.

The plot is about a young girl in junior high that doesn't have the looks or social skills to enjoy life. She is below average in every way. She is fairly ugly, not particularly smart, kind or even lucky for that matter. She just doesn't excel at anything.

This as a main character is already quite grim, a protagonist who doesn't excel at anything. We are even taught from a very early age this impossible. Teachers, guidance counselors, parents,... everybody will always say everyone is good at at least something. But this film doesn't grant you such cozy illusions. The cold truth then, some people just suck at everything.

The film doesn't stop there at tearing down all those cozy 'facts' about life. Nearly every character in this movie is just plain mean. Of course you might expect this from those nasty little children who don't know better, but then you get to see the adults.

The mother's behavior borders on cruelty, she antagonizes Dawn (the main character) and openly favors her other, more beautiful and successful daughter.

The teachers act along the same lines. When they are not ignoring the bullying, they actually have the nerve to hold Dawn accountable for being bullied.

Even when a janitor walks in on Dawn being threatened by a knife he doesn't care. Dawn gets a chance to escape, but he doesn't even pause and just goes about his business.

After throwing the inherent goodness of people out of the window, the film continues to attack the sense of cosmic justice. In our society we believe that if you do something bad, bad things will happen to you. Well, not in this film. The people who wrong Dawn constantly get away with it and she is often punished without reason.

The last hope would for our classic Hollywood sense of good would be that Dawn endures this all, but stays good herself. Of course no such luck, every chance she gets she lashes out to the ones weaker than her. She picks on her little sister and her only friend whenever she feels angry.

This is what I think this film is about. Life isn't inherently good. Things aren't going to be OK just because that is easier to belief. People suck and are always going to be cruel. More often than not, things will fail even if you give it everything you've got. Basically life sucks for some (if not most) people and if it sucks for you there is often nothing you can do about it.

It is because of this message I rated this film so high. You need to have a lot of courage to make a film that will confront people with these uncomfortable truths. Most people wont be grateful to see more than the perfect picture society paints. And who knows, maybe ignorance is better, it will certainly make you happier. But this film is for people who learned the truth the hard way. It isn't always going to be fine, you might never be happy and most important of all: it doesn't matter how much you try, you might never succeed.