Review of Welcome to the Dollhouse (1996) by Bj E — 25 Jan 2009

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 lesbo 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 rape her after school and spends the entire day threatening her. She's saved from being raped however due to trashman-interuptus. But she gets a call that night from him, informing her that she'll get raped tomorrow instead.

She doesn't get raped 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!