Critical Acclaim
The film was a surprise success, considering it was a relatively low budget, independently produced film. It garnered critical praise for its nail-biting view of a pre-teen outcast, and won the Grand Jury Prize for best dramatic feature at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. Critic Roger Ebert has been vocal about his love for the film, giving it four stars out of four and placing it at number five on his "Best of 1996" list.
The film currently holds an 90% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which states, "Twelve-year-old Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) is perhaps the most put-upon adolescent in film history in Todd Solondz's bitterly hilarious black comedy Welcome to the Dollhouse." At Amazon.ca, critic Jim Emerson says "What is junior high school but a strange, disorienting pastiche of black comedy, tragedy, soap opera, and (most of all) horror movie? Well, that pretty much describes Todd Solondz's astonishingly honest and clear-sighted film, Welcome to the Dollhouse." At IMDB, critic Mike Joyce says "Welcome to the Dollhouse is a black comedy, and one often feels guilty for laughing at Dawn's predicaments. All in all, it is a sad (yet somehow funny), look at poor Dawn's life. One can't help but think that she could get somewhere if she would just get a new wardrobe, new glasses, and a new hairdo. However, if she did that, it would effectively be another unrealistic, Hollywood-style film with a happy ending. I recommend this film to anyone who enjoys black comedies, or who wants to be taken back to the terrors of high school."
Read more about this topic: Welcome To The Dollhouse
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