| | | Not all girls want to play with dolls.
Features: DVD, Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, Hi-fi Stereo, English, French, Spanish, Subtitled
Todd Solondz became the most talked-about new director in recent years with this acclaimed comedy about the suburban condition. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Welcome to the Dollhouse follows 11-year-old Dawn "Wienerdog" Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), a junior high geek who just wants to be popular. Teased by her classmates, tormented by the school bully, Dawn develops an improbable plan to seduce the star of a high-school garage band. Bitterly funny and true to life, Welcome To The Dollhouse is a "mordantly hilarious suburban comedy...excruciating funny."
"...mighty satisfying." Stacey Richter, Tucson Weekly
Editor's Note
Todd Solondz's WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE follows the painful daily trials of Dawn "Wienerdog" Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), an awkward, nerdy 12-year-old. The middle child between her geeky older brother, Mark (Matthew Faber), and her sickeningly sweet little sister, Missy (Daria Kalinina), Dawn has a rough time with her family and everything else, including school and boys. She's obsessed with Mark's hunky bandmate, Steve (Eric Mabius), but the only guy who pays her any attention is the local thug, Brandon (Brendan Sexton III), who constantly threatens her with rape.With startling accuracy and humor, Solondz captures the hell known as junior high in his blow-by-blow account of Dawn's difficult life. One of the darkest and funniest tales of adolescence ever filmed, DOLLHOUSE serves as a grateful reminder that puberty strikes only once.
Plot Summary
The horrors of junior high are vividly recreated in this darkly comic tale of a painfully unhip seventh grade girl whose classmates' merciless taunting is only compounded by her dreary, middle-child home life. A hilarious, bittersweet black comedy from Todd Solondz, director of HAPPINESS, an equally bleak tale of the underbelly of grown-up American suburbia.
| Features | French Subtitles | | Widescreen Version | | Standard Version | | Talent & Filmographies | | English Subtitles | | Spanish Subtitles |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Columbia Tri-Star |
| Release Date: 6/24/2008 |
| Running Time: 87 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1996 | | Catalog ID: 82569 | | UPC: 00043396825697 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English [CC], English | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Independent Spirit Award (1997) |  | Heather Matarazzo, Winner, Best Debut Performance | | | Brendan Sexton III, Nominee, Best Debut Performance | | | Todd Solondz, Nominee, Best Director | |
Sundance Film Festival (1996) | | Todd Solondz, Winner, Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic |
| Memorable Quotes| "Dawn, you are not leaving this table until you tell your sister that you love her!"----Mrs. Wiener (Angela Pietropinto) to Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) | | "Do you think about girls?"----Dawn to her brother Mark|"What? Are you kidding? I want to get into a good school."----Mark Wiener (Matthew Faber) | | "High school's better than junior high. They call you names, but not as much to your face."----Mark to Dawn | | "Well, Steve is horny."----Mark |"How horny?"----Dawn |"He'd go out with anyone as long as it was a girl and willing."----Mark |"You mean have intercourse?"----Dawn |"Duh."----Mark |
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| | Professional Reviews | Premiere
"...Funny and uncannily well written..." 04/01/1996 p.29Rolling Stone
"...Solondz throws himself on the land mine of puberty with blunt honesty and bracing wit..." 06/13/1996 p.60 USA Today
"...Accessible dark comedy....DOLLHOUSE is a near-perfect morsel..." -- 3 1/2 out of 4 stars 05/24/1996 p.4D Entertainment Weekly
"...Wonderfully-funny-shading-into-brutal....Keen portraits..." -- Rating: A- 06/07/1996 p.45 Variety
"...A stark, often funny and always poignant comedy....Solondz challenges in a tough, straightforward manner some of the most prevalent family values in our culture..." 09/18/1995 Film Comment
"...A winning, confidently handled, seriocomic coming of age tale..." 03/01/1996 p.51-3 New York Times
"...Mordantly hilarious....A brilliantly malevolent treat..." 05/24/1996 p.C14 Los Angeles Times
"...Highly original....Both funny and poignant..." 01/29/1996 p.F1 Chicago Sun-Times
"...It's a funny, intensely entertaining film....[Solondz] shows the kind of unrelenting attention to detail that is the key to satire..." 06/14/1996 p.32 Sight and Sound
"It's Solondz's acute observations that impress most: his rounded characters ring painfully true..." 12/01/2005 p.92 Tucson Weekly 0 of 10
Anyone who went through a few awkward years growing up--who was perhaps beat up regularly while being called a faggot, or taunted by girls with better hair, or ridiculed for picking the wrong table in the cafeteria, or systematically ignored by classmates--should probably see Welcome to the Dollhouse just to witness such humiliating and ignominious moments glamorized for eternity on the silver screen. To see that your shame has been momentarily transformed into art is, to say the least, mighty satisfying. It's also a bit disturbing. Welcome to the Dollhouse is a small, independent film written, directed and produced by Todd Solondz, who looks to be barely out of junior high himself. It doesn't really follow the standards of commercial film, and the humiliation of its central character, Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), a.k.a. Wiener Dog, the star loser and scapegoat for the entire student body of Benjamin Franklin Junior High, is relentless... The real pleasures of this film lie in the details, in the careful observation of the tone and texture of outcast life. Heather Matarazzo is astonishing as Dawn Wiener. Despite her young age she handles her role with sad, serious understatement. She manages to look about as weary as a 40-year-old housewife lugging groceries up an endless hill as she shambles through the halls of junior high, waiting for someone else to make fun of her... - Stacey Richter
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