Todd Solondz Hater Club: Welcome to The Dollhouse

This is a Todd Solondz hater fan club review that guy is so weird but I digress...

I truly wanted to hate this movie for it's vulgar depiction of middle school, that is until I remembered my own grade seven experience. What Todd Solondz gets so right is the pre-teen performance of their burgeoning maturity. It's as campy as it is gripping about the dark underbelly of preteen life in New Jersey.

Watching the social archetypes develop in real time for Dawn is truly terrifying; the film provides a type of firm objectivity about how it is to be an unwanted girl. It's as if Dawn's life depicted in this film is the prequel to witnessing one of those public couple spats that end with the police being called. Which in turn makes the ending of this movie so dark- there just is no reprieve or saving for Dawn.

Though I was absorbed by the film, I will allow myself to kind of hate it for that fact that Todd Solondz made the children in the movie work insane hours, and there was no protection for a young Heather Matarazzo who had to deal with an onslaught of mean interview questions that were mostly about her appearance in comparison to her character Dawn, affectionately known as "Wiener Dog". She wasn't invited to the TIFF premiere or it's Sundance showing where the film won the Grand Jury Prize.

Justice for Dawn Wiener and Heather Matarazzo!!