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Welcome to the Dollhouse
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics

Universal acclaim
Based on 19 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 1 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama
Written by: Todd Solondz
Directed by: Todd Solondz
Release Date:
Theatrical: March 22, 1996
DVD: August 3, 1999
Running Time: 88 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for language
Starring Heather Matarazzo, Victoria Davis, Christina Brucato, Christina Vidal, Siri Howard, Brendan Sexton III, Telly Pontidis, and Herbie Duarte
Welcome to the Dollhouse is a stark suburban comedy about 11-year-old Dawn Wiener (Matarazzo), a middle child in middle school in the middle of New Jersey. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Happiness Palindromes Storytelling
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
But I'm making Welcome to the Dollhouse sound like some sort of grim sociological study, and in fact it's a funny, intensely entertaining film.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Examiner Barry Walters
Todd Solondz's grand prize winner at this year's Sundance Film Festival lapses into satire, but its parodistic slant only exaggerates what is truthful, making the unpleasantness of that awkward age all the more disturbing and hilarious. It's a horror film starring reality in the monster role.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
But Solondz also creates keen portraits of the participating characters in Dawn's daily drama. (The only downside: The drama veers unsteadily toward outlandishness.)
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
With his ability to understand and convey these absurdist scenarios in both adult and preteen terms, writer-director Solondz catches the unlooked-for humor in poignant, hurtful situations.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
The beauty of Welcome to the Dollhouse is its pokerfaced objectivity, which neither condescends to its pubescent victim nor romantically inflates her plight.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Elvis Mitchell
With a fine vengeance along with flashes of great, unexpected tenderness, Mr. Solondz lethally evokes every petty humiliation that his seventh-grade heroine can't wait to forget.
Read Full Review >Variety Emanuel Levy
Though lacking the sensationalistic elements of a movie like "Kids", Dollhouse offers unflinching realism, meticulous attention to detail and deliciously wicked humor as it explores the growing pains of a misfit.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Steve Davis
As Dawn, Matarazzo isn't afraid to evoke the horrors of puberty with a straightforward charmlessness: She's gawky, unhappy, and confused, while her tingling of sexual desire downright gives you the shivers.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff(not credited)
Hilarious and stunningly frank, writer-director Todd Solondz's evocation of awkward adolescence is a bracing antidote to the counterfeit nostalgia of "The Wonder Years" or "My So-Called Life".
Read Full Review >USA Today Mike Clark
Welcome to the Dollhouse does, with accessible dark comedy and chilling honesty, reminding us right off that school-cafeteria agonies only begin with the cuisine. [24 May 1996 Pg.04.D]
Time Richard Schickel
Solondz observes all this activity from an objectifying distance, very much the anthropologist trekking through the heart of darkness
Read Full Review >Empire Caroline Westbrook
It may not be to everybody's taste, but this is a daring antidote to its more saccharine cousins.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Rita Kempley
Writer-director Todd Solondz is far from clueless when it comes to the agonies of early adolescence, which he mercilessly re-creates in his caustic suburban comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
It scores its comic points with dire one-liners, an astringent dearth of sentimentality and only-in-America developments.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
Todd Solondz's movie begins like a suburban ugly-duckling tale with many comic overtones, but it grows darker as it goes along, evoking dangers that youngsters must be alert to in today's world - from drugs to child abuse - and showing how cruel children can be to one another when grownups aren't around.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Peter Stack
Solondz ("Fear, Anxiety and Depression") is almost unrelenting in his quirky fixation with the adolescent outsider and he pursues visions of everyday human injury nearly to the point of caricature. But he stops just short, and this amusingly twisted film mixes humor and heart-tugging sadness with a disturbing vitality.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
In this impressive debut, Solonz doesn't pull any punches in conveying the side of junior high that "The Wonder Years" never depicted: the naked cruelty that some boys and girls suffer at the hands of their classmates, their teachers, and even members of their own family.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Laura Miller
Solondz's staunch commitment to depicting Dawn's humiliation sans sentimentality is honorable, and his eye for everyday human nastiness apt, but his intentions are rather cautious.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
This obsessive movie, awarded the grand jury prize at the Sundance festival, may not quite live up to its advance billing; the subject is powerful, but the filmmaking often seems slapdash, and the final half hour dithers.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 10.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Josh C gave it a10:
A Massterpiece ! One of the best films of 1996. Funny, touching, and all around wonderful. It figures that a smug, self-important blowhard like Rosenbaum would give this a negative review.
