i must say that i wanted very much to enjoy welcome to the dollhouse . i'd watched the trailer and laughed hysterically at each line . however , in its full theatrical version , this film is a complete failure . dollhouse definitely has its moments , but mostly this film spent its time flip-flopping between attempts to be satirical and poignant--often failing . writer/director , todd solondz , unfortunately has no ability to pleasantly mix the two sides it seemed he wanted to express . the impression i had of the writing was that the draft used wasn't very far from the first one . everything was presented as is , there was not one ounce of subtlety . dawn weiner , the young girl who's life is pure torment , at one point calls a bully a retard . later , the bully , brandon , takes dawn to a junk yard where he plans to rape her . instead , he tells her that his brother is retarded , implies his feeling were hurt and they start a relationship . as written , this scene was pulled off in the worst way possible because it suffered severely from clichi-itis . brandon's character steps up to the fence , into close-up and makes his declaration , " . . . he's not in any grade , he's retarded . " todd solondz assumes we'll start to feel brandon's pain , however the scene is too contrived toward that expectation and it proves that solondz thinks an audience will react to 'sad scenes' like damned , pre-programmed machines . as a director , mr . solondz is rarely competent . too often do we watch actors move for the camera . as in the scene i described earlier when brandon walks to a close-up by the fence . this technique kills any possible sense of reality within the performances because we are too aware of their staging . i have long been of the opinion that actors are not a tool to serve the camera , but the camera is the tool to capture the actors' performances and even to add to it . all to often , i think , directors stage their actors in service to 'the shot' when they should be doing the opposite . a great example of this is glengarry glen ross . if you watch , you'll notice that director james foley is moving his camera , not his actors , for effect . the performances in the film are usually pretty good with a few exceptions and there's really not much to say here other than a few of the actors deserve the attention this film will bring--specifically dawn weiner , her mother , her brother , her sister and even steve rogers . lastly , there was a moment in the film where dawn goes to new york to find her little sister . she goes to sleep and suddenly wakes up to see a man running down the street with her sister screaming under his arm . i remember thinking at that point that because this film had already lost all integrity , this dream sequence actually did tricked you only because something this ridiculously inept was possible within welcome to the dollhouse . and it is for reasons like this that i think todd solondz did a horrible job as both writer and director . he seemed desperate to shake our views of teenage life--to be an iconoclast--but fell into clichi , which i despise . this film won best picture at the sundance film festival and like the brothers mcmullen last year , they both proved that independent filmmakers can make films as cliched as hollywood can . 
