WELCOME TO
THE DOLL HOUSE

• Starring Heather Matarazzo, Matthew Faber and Brendan Sexton Jr.
• Directed by Todd Solondz
• Rated R, with profanity, violence and sexual innuendo; running time 87 minutes
• With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a 8

(June 13, 1996) -- Parents sometimes tell their 12-or 13-year-old kids to enjoy junior high school, "because these are the best years of your life." The dark new comedy, Welcome to the Dollhouse is the perfect antidote to such nonsense.

As the film so eloquently reminds us: Junior high school sucks.

Unless you're an exceptionally balanced, overly mature, good-looking kid, seventh grade is a time of cruelty and pain.

It's when snobs first emerge -- and don't pretend to control their impulses. It's when outsiders feel more outside than at any other time in their lives.

If you look back fondly on those years, consider yourself very lucky or quite deluded.

Obviously, novice filmmaker Todd Solondz remembers what it was like. That's why he's written, directed and produced this edgy, inventive and wickedly funny black comedy.

The film portrays the day-to-day seventh-grade life of Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), the middle child of a middle-class suburban family in the middle of New Jersey.

Dawn is obviously a work-in-progress, but her crooked teeth, nerdy glasses and pulled-back hair give no suggestion that she'll ever be on the cover of Vogue.

She is, however, bright, loyal and passionate and has a lot of other positive qualities. But her seventh-grade classmates refuse to look beyond the surface.

"Why do you hate me?" she asks, in desperation.

"Because you're ugly," they reply, without blinking. To them, Dawn is "Wiener Dog" and "Lesbo."

Even the most outcast boy in her class looks down on her -- and constantly threatens to "rape" her. (He's also a troubled kid, dealing with his own house of pain; he could be the central character in another similar film.)

None of the adults in Dawn's life are any help. Her mother reserves her praise for Dawn's cute younger sister, a budding ballet star who trips across the yard in a tutu. Her father is oblivious to everything. Her teachers play favorites -- and she's clearly not one.

Dawn's older brother, Mark, is also nerdy; but he escapes into the fantasy that his inept garage band has a future. And, failing that, he knows junior high school is simply a bridge that must be crossed en route to a good college.

He counsels that she simply hold on. "High school is better. They'll still call you names, but not so much to your face."

Dawn does what she can to stay emotionally upright -- she gets revenge against her sister by taking a hacksaw to the heads of her Barbie dolls; she won't allow Brandon to copy her paper during a pop quiz; and she hides out in her own little backyard clubhouse, euphemistically called the Special People Club.

But none of these things make up for the way she is treated.

And to Solondz's credit, Welcome to the Dollhouse provides no Hollywood revenge -- Dawn doesn't kill off her detractors, as in Heathers, nor do we witness an ugly duckling transformation. The movie doesn't end with her riding off to the prom.

Heather Matarazzo is a remarkable find as Dawn. Eleven at the time of the shooting, she's in nearly every scene of the film, and delivers a performance that is as moving as it is witty.

Welcome to the Dollhouse is no coming-of-age story. Instead, expect to see a slice of seventh grade life, and a funny yet poignant reminder that pimples are the least of the blemishes that mark us in early adolescence.