Movie Review: Welcome to the Dollhouse

Welcome to the Dollhouse: Torgo approves

I love Netflix. They have a new feature where you can watch movies instantly from their website on your computer. It's not Mac compatible yet, but fortunately I have my work laptop with Windows.

So last night we watched Welcome to the Dollhouse. I remember not seeing this when it came out, though I remember being interested in it.

In general, it's a horribly bleak and awful movie. But it's trying to portray 7th grade, and 7th grade can be horribly bleak and awful. I remember people just like these characters from my junior high school.

One of the best things about this movie is that it doesn't fall into the Little Miss Sunshine happy ending on stage (see also: Napoleon Dynamite, About a Boy, and many others). But it does end with the main character on a stage in front of her tormentors. All those other movies where everyone suddenly loves the protagonist seem contrived (as they are) next to this film.

That's not to say it's fun to watch. Again, bleak and awful. Awkward and uncomfortable. But once it's over, I realized it's a movie that is more like 7th grade than anything else I've seen. It's not the Wonder Years so much as the painful years.