Classic Movie Review: 'Welcome to the Dollhouse' Be Nice to Dawn Weiner

Junior High and High School Suck! That’s the theses of director Todd Solondz via his second feature film effort, Welcome to the Dollhouse. Solondz set out to make a darker version of the kind of High School movie that had been around for years but always felt a little fake or a little too sunny and optimistic. Solondz’s vision of Junior High, via main character Dawn Wiener, played by Heather Mattarazzo, was one in which the dangers of High School could be literal dangers as threats and taunts can turn to actual, potential, violence.

Welcome to the Dollhouse introduces the unusual character of Dawn Wiener. Dawn is a gawky, gangly, socially awkward 12 year old girl. She’s remarkably resilient and thoughtful despite having spent much of her time at school and at home being either bullied or forgotten. At school she’s called ‘Weiner-Dog’ or some other choice insults too nasty to be printed here. At home, Dawn’s college bound older brother, Mark (Matthew Faber) and her ballerina younger sister, Missy (Daria Kalinina) are both adored by their parents while Dawn is a pariah.

It’s notable that Dawn hardly even looks like any other member of her family, a slight but notable othering of the young girl. It’s part of what Todd Solondz is going for in Welcome to the Dollhouse, subtly underlining the ways in which young Dawn is alienated without yet having realized it. Alienation is likely Dawn’s future. Growing up an outcast often leads to becoming an outcast in the future. It’s not hard to imagine Dawn Weiner growing up with few friends and limited contact with her parents and siblings, leading a life of quiet desperation, likely with a cat or multiple cats.

Dawn’s life is changed ever so slightly with the first stirrings of sexual desire. Brother Mark has a band that plays in the family garage. Recently, Mark has reached out to a High School Senior named Steve Rogers (Eric Mabius) to join the band as lead singer. When Dawn sees Steve for the first time she experiences fireworks, her hormones go into overdrive as does her imagination. Steve is not only an object of desire, he’s her ticket to a life where she doesn’t need her family and where she can stick it to the bullies by showing off her gorgeous much older boyfriend.

Naturally, this fantasy is going nowhere, Steve is as much of a jerk as anyone else in the story. Nevertheless, he does provide several wonderfully poignant moments when we watch poor Dawn desperately try to connect with him. We know how embarrassing this will be for her and it’s agonizing to watch her sink ever deeper into her fantasies knowing that a brutal, nasty, and definitive rejection lies in her very near future. A scene in which Dawn asks Steve to join her ‘Special People’s Club’ is what we would unquestionably refer to as cringe today. It was cringe inducing in 1995 as well but it feels more definitively, devastatingly, torturous in the internet age.

I’ve read several articles that refer to Dawn as ugly which I find to be incredibly mean. Heather Matarazzo is completely adorable in Welcome to the Dollhouse. How anyone could judge the attractiveness of a 12 year old girl in any grown up way is disturbing to me. Dawn is a child and generally speaking, children aren’t ugly or attractive. They are children. They can be cute in a harmless way or you can judge them by their behavior. Judging a 12 year old by some standard of attractiveness is something I am glad we as a culture have left behind. At least I hope we have left that behind. Ugh!

My reaction to Welcome to the Dollhouse was one of affection and of heartache. I felt awful for Dawn and the way she is treated by seemingly everyone else in the movie. I was inspired by how resilient she could be in the face of unending indignities. Heather Matarazzo invests a loving innocence in Dawn that you can imagine might grow into a thick skinned toughness that will allow her to find her way in the world on her own terms. That happy imagining in mind, I really liked Welcome to the Dollhouse. But more than anything, I really liked Dawn Weiner. She’s a character who inspires sympathy, pathos, and a genuine admiration.

Welcome to the Dollhouse is the classic movie on the next Everyone’s a Critic Movie Review Podcast. Monday, going live on Monday, June 20th on YouTube and on your favorite podcast apps.