Retrospective Film Review

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995) • 25 Years Later

An awkward pre-teen struggles to cope with inattentive parents, snobbish classmates, a smart older brother, an attractive younger sister, and her own insecurities.

“Why do you hate me?” 11-year-old Dawn asks a girl who’s tormenting her. “Because you’re ugly.” Sad, touching, but also agonisingly funny, Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse is totally accurate about the viciousness with which children can treat one another, often as they struggle in learning how to love. Never lecturing the viewer, nor excessively solemn, it still pulls no punches.

The humiliations dished out to its central character Dawn (Heather Matarazzo) by her schoolmates are frighteningly believable; reminders of the kind of casual pre-teen nastiness most adults have managed to forget. And while sometimes the brutality is comic (there’s a brief and priceless scene where Dawn’s sawing off the head of her little sister’s mermaid Barbi), it can also be genuinely dark. A little later, as that sister sleeps, Dawn’s standing…