Todd Solondz directs Heather Matarazzo, Brendan Sexton III and Eric Mabius in this teen comedy where twelve-year-old Dawn Wiener is continually bullied by her school peers and her suburban family.

Matarazzo puts in one of the great coming-of-age lead turns here, up there with Léaud’s Antoine Doinel and Bel Powley in The Diary Of A Teenage Girl. The film is funny but pummelling. Bleak and without respite or judgment or moralising or hope. Welcome To The Dollhouse is an acidic independent but I’m not sure it has much more to say than the world is a hopeless hell of mediocrity and pettiness. And as much as I love glossier studio contemporaries from the Nineties, this feels like an outlier that almost needs to exist as a counterpoint. A good proving ground for Solondz’s ultra anxious, hyper cynical Happiness, I do wish he’d go back to basics and make something of this or that ilk again.

7

Perfect Double Bill: The Diary Of A Teenage Girl (2015)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/