This blog entry is part of my “movie year countdown”. To read more about that check out my first Spout filmblog entry
Welcome to the Dollhouse
This is the second movie year countdown movie in a row that was suggested to me by Andy. However I already had my eye on this movie since I had thoroughly enjoyed Todd Solondz's Happiness. However my eye was on one of his other movies before this one. Something about the fact that the main character was an adolescent girl made me think i just wouldn't connect. I was way wrong.
I watched this one with Adam who said something like, "this movie is like Napoleon Dynamite if it were more realistic and more funny." He might have also said something about and if it were a lot more sad and painful to watch too, but that might have been implied. Of course Welcome to the Dollhouse came out almost ten years before Napoleon Dynamite too.
I find this movie to be so perfect. Off the top of my head I can't think of a better movie starring and about adolescents. The different types of characters and the way they speak, it's all perfect. I think it's because the characters all all so pathetically real. Sure they all have their own delusions, but they all have their own realistic weaknesses. I'm not talking about the invented weaknesses that are usually inserted into characters as some sort of script formula. The fact that all of the characters are flawed and weak makes them all unlovable in ways that would never be shown in most traditional film narratives. But because of that I think you come to love the movie even more, even the characters that you probably should be disgusted by. I embrace it because it feels real and there's nothing else out there to embrace.
Can't wait to see more from Solondz.
Rating: 10/10