May 24, 1996
WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE was a big deal at the time. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance with its brutally relatable, darkly funny portrait of the cruelty of children and the pain of not fitting in. It became a surprise hit and introduced moviegoers to an exciting new voice, writer/director Todd Solondz. Luckily nobody knew about his more Woody-Allen-like 1989 debut FEAR, ANXIETY & DEPRESSION, in which he starred as a neurotic playwright.
This is the story of Dawn Wiener (rookie Heather Matarazzo), a friendless seventh grader in suburban New Jersey. I love the opening scene, which vividly captures the terror of being an awkward kid in a noisy middle school cafeteria trying to find somewhere to sit. There’s a diabolical spin on a trope because she finds gloomy burnout Lolita (Victoria Davis) all alone and joins her, though their interaction is cold. When a group of giggly cheerleaders come over to ask, “Hi Dawn, sorry to bother you but we were just wondering, are you a lesbian?” we know in our bones that this freak is supposed to defend this geek. She’d rather stay out of it but she feels bad enough for Dawn or just has enough disdain for the cheerleaders to step in, tell off the bullies and become Dawn’s unlikely friend and protector. And it will be so moving. Except that doesn’t happen at all. Lolita joins in with the taunting and goes on to become Dawn’s worst bully. (read the rest of this shit…)
I don’t know what you’ve heard about this one, but I keep hearing that it’s a pile of shit. That Todd Solondz has gone from a visionary manipulator of our deepest taboos and human flaws, to some kind of shock value asshole just trying to get a rise out of people. That this is just a big fuck you to the audience with no sense of humanity and etc. etc.
Remember that motherfucker that made Happiness? His name is Todd Solondz and you might think he’s some hipster that came out of nowhere with 1996’s Welcome to the Dollhouse and then hit it big when he was Outlaw enough to refuse to cut Happiness, brought it to a different distributor who would release it unrated or whatever. Well, that’s what I thought but then I found out about this, his first picture from 1989, one year after the release of Die Hard.
This is kind of a misleading title because really it is about ugly drooling guys sitting around in their underwear getting drunk and wishing they could have violent sex with neighbors that won’t even talk to them and that kind of business. Which, in my opinion, is not all that happy. You know how Hollywood usually pretties everybody up? Like even the criminal element in motion pictures, most of the time they are a LOT better looking than anybody I ever worked with. And the same goes for stories, if it’s a true story chances are they’re gonna streamline it, water it down a little, gussy it up a little, make it look nice “for dramatic purposes.” But the truth is there are a lot of ugly motherfuckers in this world, and they do a lot of ugly things, like some of them call up women in the phone book and jack off while they talk about “I’m gonna fuck you so hard you’re gonna come out your ears” and what not, and coincidentally that is exactly what this picture is about, Happiness. 
