“Welcome to the Dollhouse”
Directed by Todd Solondz


No matter it seems to (un)impress me, but the days where I was younger just wasn’t has great as what some people consider they were to be. I’m sure I’ll look back at my days and say that I regret not doing this or that, but for now, I’m still saying the my younger years (from age 8 to age 12) just wasn’t as fun as what the media portrays childhood to be like.

It’s obvious that director Todd Solondz didn’t like his childhood to much either. His film “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” starring a very young and still very ugly Heather Matarazzo (and yes, to this day, she still looks like a very large pile of cat-turds), is an interesting look into the life of a seventh grade girl struck between love, bullying, popularity, and being noticed.

It is time where I shall say that Heather Matarazzo’s character, Dawn Wiener, is the most accurate portrayal of a seventh grade girl that I think I have ever seen. She did a better job than the girls in my fucking seventh grade class did. Dawn is relatable, confused, frightened, ugly, fat, and weak. She is the girls with the cooties. She is who we fear and she fears us.

“Welcome to the Dollhouse” tells the tale about Dawn Wiener. No one likes her at school. EVERYONE picks on her. One boy (Brandon Sexton III) will threaten to beat her friend’s ass and rape her after school ends after each and every school day. Wiener goes home and spends time with her mom and dad, (Angela Pietroopinto and Bill Buell) who never realize that she is there, her bratty younger sister, (Daria Kalinia) who gets ALL of the attention, and her wannabe rock-star brother, (Matthew Faber) who is in a band with the hottest, horniest, and best singer in the school. (Eric Mabius)

The film, without any real plot, goes to show the day in the life of Dawn Wiener. But what some people don’t understand that while watching the film is that we are seeing the film through the eyes of a seventh grade girl. I’ll never forget the time being in the seventh grade when I heard girls about their fears of being raped and being alone. It is obvious that everyone has those types of fears, but being at the tender age of 12, Dawn Wiener has heard of these fears, but just doesn’t know how to react to them as much as some adults do.

That being said, “Welcome to the Dollhouse” probably never happened. Yeah, I know it is a movie, so it never actually happened. But the film is being seen through the eyes of young Matarazzo. She is confused with love, lonely, and wants to be noticed and liked. This may not be the tale of a real-life person, but instead a fabricated tale created by the mind of a young girl.

Many people haven’t seen Terry Gilliam’s “Tideland.” In some instances, I don’t blame them. Before the film starts, Terry Gilliam hops on screen and says that you have to remind yourself that we’re watching the film from a little girl’s point-of-view. The entire flick is imaginative. Though that film is a fantasy and this film COULD happen, it’s being seen through the eyes of two characters that are very alike. Matarazzo’s character isn’t imaginative. She just hates her life. She thinks no one pays attention to her. She thinks she’s fat. She thinks that no one likes her. She thinks someone wants to rape her. It’s her fear – being rejected.

Then again, after all, isn’t that all of our fears in some way or another?

“Welcome to the Dollhouse” never actually spoke volumes back during its release date. It took a while for people to take notice of the film and the director himself. Since then, the film has become a cult hit. The cast has gotten new roles, most notably Mabius’s character in the American sitcom “Ugly Betty” (does anyone even watch that show anymore?) and Heather Matarazzo in “Hostel II.” Yes, the scene where she gets tortured is the best scene in the movie, but it’s not really that hard since the movie sucked.

Like “Hostel II,” her character is very unlikeable here. Automatically, we hate her. We don’t even know her yet and just by looking at her from a picture it is already just too easy to despise her. She will be the girl at school that you just want to slap the shit out of for being there. There are instances in the film where she wants to do it to herself, but not because everyone hates her, but because she hates herself.

There is a scene where she asks Mabius’s character if he would like to join her “Special People” club. She doesn’t know what the meaning of special people is and she thinks that special people means… well… people who think they’re special. But then he informs her it means retarded, and that her club is for retards. She runs away thinking that she is a retard and hates herself for it. She calls her only friend a fag because she never knew what it meant.

The term “Welcome to the Dollhouse” is not supposed to be a happy term. We consider a “dollhouse” to be perfect and clean. It turns out that this dollhouse is more of a figurative phrase for hell. Everything here is a symbol of hell. The characters are hell, the setting is hell (it takes place in my home-state of New Jersey, I’ll have you know), and just thinking about the movie is hell. But I’ll have you know that “Welcome to the Dollhouse” is the best movie to take place in hell.

Fuck you, “Wristcutters.”


On the next UFC: I’m taking a break for something that I’m going to call “Movie Review Cleanup” for all of my sites and Hardcore Film Maniac blog, but when I return in two weeks, be prepared to see an analyzer analyze a movie that shouldn’t be analyzed in the first place, Tom Green’s masterpiece “Freddy Got Fingered.”