REVIEW: Welcome to the Dollhouse

The disconnect between reality and entertainment can be a fascinating pitfall to watch a film circumvent. Coming-of-age stories all but rely on being relatable to their audience, yet there has to be some element of exaggeration in order for the plot and characters to come off as engaging and entertaining. You definitely can make a film that's essentially a 1:1 portrait of everyday life, but it's then that you start to stray into mumblecore territory; while there's nothing particularly wrong with that genre as a whole, it's far from what most would consider conventionally entertaining. At the same time, placing too much stake in caricature and entertainment value can result in something too absurd for audiences to connect with; a fun time, but nothing more. Adolescence is a time mired in profanity and sex and a seemingly unbridled capacity for cruelty, yet these elements of the human experience are frequently watered-down into something more palatable for general audiences (not to mention the MPAA). We get no such worries with Todd Solondz' 1996 directorial debut, Welcome to the Dollhouse, a film that just toes the line of absurdity to the point of matching up perfectly with our collective recollections of middle school.

This is a film that, despite a solid pace and well-organized structure, doesn't have much of a plot. We're simply given a glimpse into the tumultuous life of eleven-year-old Dawn Weiner (Heather Matarazzo); with a name like that, we can imagine the hell she is forced to endure day in and day out at school. It certainly doesn't help that she's gawky, immature, and all-around unpopular. We would hope that poor Dawn is offered some respite in her own home, but no dice; she's the oft put-upon middle child, sandwiched between an overachieving big brother (Matthew Faber) and a tooth-achingly adorable little sister (Daria Kalinina). Like so many her age, Dawn is trapped in that dead-zone between childhood and adolescence; she wants to be popular, but she also doesn't care for the social politics that dictate daily life at school and would much rather just play in her clubhouse. She finds herself at an age where being yourself is the easiest way to become a target and retaliation against injustice is discouraged at every turn. I can remember being told in school that, if we were ever being bullied, the LAST thing we should do is fight back (I'd later learn this was especially true if said bully was someone with authority over you, like say, a second-grade teacher). Fortunately for me, my parents instilled in me what a load of bull that was ("you'll get in trouble at school, but we promise you won't get in trouble with us"); unfortunately for Dawn, she lacks any such support system at home. No matter where she goes or what she does, this is a kid stuck in her formative years who simply can't get no satisfaction.

I feel it's inevitable (when talking about this film about a bullied and neglected young girl) to not draw some comparisons to Carrie. I've only just watched Welcome to the Dollhouse recently and have already recommended it to friends as "like Carrie, if Carrie didn't have her powers". It gets the job done, but the film is really so much more than that. The thing about Carrie in comparison to Dollhouse is that Carrie White is a character who finds herself very much in a "horror movie" situation. This is where that exaggeration I mentioned before comes in, in the form of situational hyperbole; her mother is a religious fanatic who locks her in a prayer closet, she's outright assaulted by all the popular girls at her school, and this all comes to a head with a telekinetic cocktail of death and destruction. As relatable as the themes are, it's still a fantastical situation; not everyone has been pelted with tampons in the locker room showers or doused in pig's blood at their prom. Everyone, however, has been called a name at some point in their life. Everyone has suffered the pain of being someone's second choice. Everyone has buckled under the pressure and said something they'd later regret. Despite being a more grounded portrait of the adolescent experience than Carrie, Welcome to the Dollhouse is, in some ways, a horror movie in its own right.

It's this kind of raw, complex humanity that makes this film truly shine. Dawn often comes off like a chosen martyr, suffering the slings and arrows of her ruthless classmates and her loathsome mother. Yet at the same time, she's far from innocent. Hers is a character with deep flaws who, like so many kids, will lash out when she doesn't fully understand how to process her emotions. In one particularly brutal scene, we see her viciously admonish her best (and only) friend, assuming that he can't hear her over the phone. Of course, he hears the whole thing and is understandably destroyed by this betrayal; we know Dawn doesn't really comprehend the power of her own words, otherwise she wouldn't throw terms like "faggot" around with such reckless abandon. But that doesn't exactly do much to lessen the sting.

We see these flaws paralleled with the character of Brandon, played by Brendan Sexton III. When he first appears, he's a clear and present antagonistic force in Dawn's life; a troubled and downright despicable young man whom we want nothing to do with. It was around this point in the plot that I found myself constantly hoping that Dawn would strike back against her oppressors; that she'd tell off her mother or fight back against the bullies at school, raise a little hell in the name of well-deserved retribution. But as the film goes on, we learn more about Brandon and come to realize that his situation, in many ways, mirrors Dawn's; he's just more comfortable with retaliating than she is. It's a thought-provoking revelation, in which we realize that this character we're made to initially dislike is merely acting out in the ways we wish our protagonist would. That "be careful what you wish for" mentality is an undercurrent throughout the entire film, and not once does it feel hackneyed or clichéd. Dawn wishes to be just like everyone else, not realizing (until it's too late, of course) that "everyone else" is a cruel, uncaring monster. 

The other predominant theme here is, above all else, dissatisfaction (take a wild guess what Rolling Stones song Dawn's brother is practicing with his band the first time we see her at home). The movie revels in bucking your standard coming-of-age tropes and trends, reminding us that, in real life, there isn't always a crystal-clear resolution. The nerds and geeks who get bullied day in and day out seldom ever rise up and gain acceptance from their peers, the maladjusted misanthrope rarely has a heart of gold, and the loveable loser typically doesn't get the girl. Lessons are rarely learned until much later on in life (if they're ever learned at all) and children, while innocent in their own kind of way, possess remarkable talent when it comes to abusing, ostracizing, and brutalizing their peers. Not to paint this film as bleaker than it is (the humor here is pitch-black, but it's by no means an unpleasant film to watch), but there are several moments where we think we know what's about to happen; "this is the moment where she gives a big speech in front of the whole school and wins them all over", or "this is the part where everyone learns their lesson and becomes her friend", or "this is when her mother realizes the error of her ways and apologizes for not taking her feelings into consideration". Time and time again, we're proven wrong. This is not a story totally devoid of hope or happiness or optimism (the ending is, like most of the film itself, almost sweet in a bleak, sardonic kind of way), but there are no easy answers or fairy tale endings to be found here.

While Solondz manages to relay this theme with admirable consistency and attention to detail, it also proves to be the film's greatest downfall. In keeping with the undercurrent of dissatisfaction, there are a number of elements here that fall flat, most notably of which is the ending. Again, while I enjoyed Solondz's thematic integrity in ending the film the way that he did, crafting an intentionally unsatisfying ending doesn't make said ending any less unsatisfying for the viewer. There are a number of plot points that are left unresolved, not to mention seemingly-major characters who simply disappear from the film altogether after certain points. It's understandable, considering that everything (from the story to the characters) is crafted to buck genre conventions and deny the audience closure, but making the film a less-enjoyable experience on the grounds that it's thematically-appropriate seldom ever works out in the film's favor. It's an idea that works in concept; looking back, I can appreciate making the entire film itself into a sort of meta-statement, writing characters out of the plot the second they cease to contribute to Dawn's story (not unlike how people tend to drift apart in real life). But at the same time, there's a part of me that was genuinely emotionally invested, so it feels as though the film gets in its own way in that regard. It's a double-edged sword to be sure.

Despite my hangups, I still found Welcome to the Dollhouse to be a fantastically-made film, holding back just enough to keep things from feeling unrealistically cruel. The end result is a biting, deeply-resonant piece of work that made me laugh and squirm in equal measure. It's the kind of film that inspires the kind of questions that keep you up late at night; was I the Dawn Weiner of my middle school, but I was just too oblivious to realize it? Or worse, was I one of the other kids, consciously making someone else's life a living hell just because that was how the law of the jungle worked back in the day? In a sea of films that aim to make us feel a wistful kind of nostalgia towards our formative years, Welcome to the Dollhouse serves as a blunt rebuttal, arguing that maybe we should all be glad the godforsaken ordeal that was middle school is long since over and done with.

REVIEW: The Brothers Grimm

There's something to be said, I think, in defense of well-meaning schlock. Unlike your usual soulless cash-grab, an otherwise lackluster film can be elevated by some degree of creativity on the part of the filmmaker. This is something we saw last year with Kong: Skull Island; in terms of plot and character development, it was about as basic as they come. However, the cinematography, creature design, and overall atmosphere of the film illustrated just how much of a difference a little artistic effort can make. One could make a similar case, I feel, for today's subject, The Brothers Grimm. Before the mid-aughts tsunami of edgy fairy tale adaptations (Snow White and the Huntsman is likely the most infamous, but Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is easily the most ludicrous), Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam gave us his own spin on the mythos behind the classic folk tales (and the men who collected them). It's a movie I could see working well in a double-feature with Sleepy Hollow, but I admittedly enjoyed The Brothers Grimm a good deal more (despite its flaws).

A fictitious tale of the real-life Brothers Grimm, the film paints the siblings as a pair of con-men, travelling from town to town across French-occupied Germany, using smoke and mirrors to perform phony exorcisms. After being arrested by the French military, the siblings (played by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger) are instructed to investigate the disappearance of a number of young girls in the small village of Marbaden. Suspected to be the work of fellow con-artists, the brothers are offered amnesty for their various grifts if they can expose whatever scheme is being cooked up and rescue the missing girls. However, they soon discover that the curses and folklore surrounding the supposedly enchanted forest is far more real than what they're used to dealing with. Alongside Mercurio Cavaldi (an Italian torturer played by Peter Stormare) and a hunter named Angelika (Game of Thrones' Lena Headey), it's up to Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm to solve the mystery of the enchanted forest and save a host of kidnapped children from succumbing to a grisly fate.

The most immediately-striking thing about this entire film (and my favorite detail) is the absurd-yet-macabre atmosphere Gilliam is able to establish. Before being sanitized and mass-produced into a multi-million dollar franchise by the Disney Corporation, the original Grimms' Fairy Tales was chock-full of stories of death, murder, and other assorted horrors. Cinderella's step-sisters were mutilated and blinded for their sins and the evil Queen in Snow White was literally forced to dance herself to death while wearing red-hot shoes. The content and themes of these stories tended to be a tad heavier than the usual "wish upon a star and believe in your dreams" schtick we're used to today, and it's that sense of tone that Gilliam captures magnificently here. While it is an action movie, it's not especially violent or profane, no moreso than any given Pirates of the Caribbean movie. This is a perfectly acceptable film to let children watch (almost like a more adult Over the Garden Wall), that is if you're willing to deal with the series of morbid and surreal night-terrors The Brothers Grimm is sure to inspire. 

Yes, everyone still lives happily ever after in the end, and yes, the majority of these moments employ liberal use of dodgy mid-2000's CGI, but there were a few moments where even I, a grown-ass man, found myself getting a little unsettled by just how morbid some of these sequences were. Maybe it's because so many of these scenes (again, true to their 19th century inspirations) involve horrific things happening to children; then again, it's not much of a stretch to define a scene where a small girl is eaten alive by a horse full of spiders as pure, high-octane nightmare fuel. There's also a sequence later on in which a gingerbread man forms out of a pile of mud and proceeds to steal a child's face, leaving her to stumble around blindly, attempting to scream despite not having a mouth. While some people may find scenes like this offputting, I absolutely loved it; it's all presented without a hint of shame or irony, perfectly capturing that sense of foreboding and dark humor you see all the time in old-world folklore. The film knows what it's about and it has no intention of apologizing (as illustrated in the scene in which an adorable kitten is kicked into a rotor-blade). You get the sense Gilliam wanted to present the side of these classic stories you seldom see anymore in popular culture, and it ends up being arguably the biggest feather in the film's cap.

I also adored the way that Gilliam was able to tie all of the notable Grimm folklore together, without it coming off as trite or unnatural. The idea behind the film is that Jacob (the more studious brother, played by Heath Ledger) is constantly taking down notes in a leather-bound journal, the implication of course being that these notes will eventually serve as the inspiration for the characters and stories collected in Grimms' Fairy Tales. The wicked Mirror Queen (Monica Bellucci), for example, is meant to serve as a sort of amalgam of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the titular princess from Rapunzel. The woodsman (Tomáš Hanák) is also the big, bad wolf. The film doesn't try for the overplayed "well here's what ACTUALLY HAPPENED" gimmick like so many other modern twists on classic stories, instead putting a unique spin on things that, overall, feels like a cohesive and believable backstory for each of these timeless fairy tales. Granted, I mean believable in a world with blood-moon enchantments and living gingerbread men, but the point I'm getting at is that, considering the world the film establishes, we're able to connect the dots between fiction and "reality". There are countless examples of the creative process working like this in real life (the Chain Chomps in Super Mario Bros were inspired by a neighborhood dog that would chase a young Shigeru Miyamoto around, Professor Snape was based off of J.K. Rowling's firm but fair chemistry teacher, etc.), so it's interesting to see a film work embrace its own fictional aspects and work backwards in such a way.

Attention to detail aside, I was most surprised at how taken I was with the relationship between the titular brothers; in the opening scene, we see a destitute family waiting for a doctor to help their sick little girl. Her brother returns home, only to reveal that he sold the family cow for "magic beans" that would supposedly cure his sister. As one might expect, the beans aren't magic at all and the little girl succumbs to her sickness and dies, much to the dismay of her brothers (who grow up to be Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm). It's a surprisingly dramatic origin for the two, illustrating just why they've taken up work as travelling con-artists, as well as providing context for their dynamic (both as brothers and as business partners). Wilhelm (Damon) is the more profit-minded of the two, typically taking charge; whenever anything sparks Jacob's imagination, Wilhelm is quick to drag him back down to Earth by mentioning the magic beans. And it's because of this inciting incident that, when the enchantments in the forest are proven to be real, Jacob is driven to get to the bottom of things while his brother would be content to collect what they can and skip town. If he can prove the existence of magic, then he can absolve himself of guilt for his sister's death; if magic exists, then she died because of a scam artist, rather than because of Jacob's ignorance and naïveté. It's an unexpectedly resonant aspect of an otherwise schlocky, offbeat action film, and one that I greatly appreciated in the end.

For all my praise, the film is far from perfect. The plot tends to meander about in search of something interesting to do, and scenes tend to just happen one after another. At just under two-hours, it definitely feels its length (despite some fun action setpieces scattered throughout). It doesn't exactly follow a traditional plot structure, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I have to say that this is one element where I wish Terry Gilliam had played it a tad more traditional. Your typical three-act structure is pretty hard to mess up, and while one can definitely divide the film up into a beginning, middle, and end, it's hardly three clean, even sections. The second act lasts essentially from when the brothers arrive at Marbaden all the way to the climax, and while this is where the majority of memorable scenes are found (such as the aforementioned nightmare horse and gingerbread man sequences), they're all spaced out between long spans of nothing. Our villains, while easy to root against, lack any and all subtlety or nuance and arguably the most interesting character (Angelika, a stoic hunter played by Game of Thrones' Lena Headey) is written out of the main conflict just before the final battle, relegated to nothing more than a typical damsel in distress who, oddly enough, ends up something of a romantic reward for both the brothers. At the same time, however, we also get Peter Stormare acting to the rafters as a morally-questionable Italian man. So at least there's that.

All in all, I enjoyed my time with The Brothers Grimm. It's heavily flawed, but it's also a ton of fun in a really offbeat, darkly humorous sort of way. You get the sense that there was some degree of a creative vision here, rather than just an attempt to make a cheap action movie out of some public domain fairy tales. The sets and costumes and lighting are all spectacular, as is the creature design and overall idea behind the plot. It's the kind of concept that would have crashed and burned in the hands of someone like Brett Ratner or Paul W.S. Anderson, but instead found something special with Terry Gilliam. Sure, it can technically be classified as a "guilty pleasure", but why over-complicate things? It's a fun, schlocky, imaginative bit of work that'll scare the pants off of any child you put in front of it. If you find yourself in the mood for that specific kind of fantasy film that seems to intentionally stray away from that Peter Jackson standard of "epic", you could certainly do a lot worse than this.

REVIEW: Strawinsky and the Mysterious House

As I've said before, I like to avoid punching-down on this blog, especially when it comes to children's entertainment. It's not exactly fair to critique something made on a shoestring budget and marketed to toddlers the way I would look at something like Logan or The Lobster; there definitely has to be some sort of sliding grade scale, otherwise this whole operation of mine looks totally pathetic (even moreso than it already does). I'm not here to make fun of a film because it lacks a blockbuster budget, the same way I won't go out of my way to poopoo the efforts of criminally mistreated animators. No, what I hone in on for these end-of-month Reviews is the ill-intent of the filmmaker. I'm a firm believer that, despite abundant amounts of evidence to the contrary, film is still very much an art form. In turn, laziness and greed are two motivators I simply cannot abide. Though I must say, in all my years of seeking out awful, low-budget heaps of trash to watch and the end of each month, I have never once come across something so outwardly malicious and underhanded as today's subject. Ladies and gentlemen, I present for your consideration; Strawinsky and the Mysterious House.

There's a good chance you're already aware of this trainwreck, thanks to the power of the internet meme machine. But to fully grasp what makes this 30-minute children's special such an abhorrent piece of work, I need to provide the necessary context. Fret not, The Globglogabgalab will get his in due time. Strawinsky is directed, produced, animated, edited, recorded, and distributed by a man named David Hutter; much like Tommy Wiseau (who infamously wrote, directed, produced, and starred in The Room), Hutter displays an impressive degree of confidence for someone who has absolutely no idea what the hell he's doing. He describes his brainchild as "a magical adventure inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia, Walt Disney animated musicals and the parables by Jesus Christ". At first I was totally baffled. Clearly this would end up being some sort of dime-store religious thing, but I was altogether unprepared for what Mr. Hutter had in store for me. I pondered what in God's good name the movie that gave us The Globglogabgalab could have to do with the word of the Bible, but I soon learned that my questions would be answered in increasingly uncomfortable ways as the film progressed.

We start out to find our bunch of animal friends awkwardly t-posing through the woods before stumbling upon a mysterious house, at which point the leader, Strawinsky, suggests breaking inside and having a look around. They find themselves in a basement full of books, who all implore the little critters to take a load off and read them; so far, it all seems innocuous enough, right? Anthropomorphic British animals in a magic house full of magic books, clearly they're building to some stock moral about how "reading is the most magical adventure of them all" or whatever, yeah? Well... stay with me here, because things are gonna go downhill very fast. 

It's at this point that the friends run into the house's caretaker(?), a troll who looks and sounds like a stereotypical caricature of a Scotsman. The troll mentions how the Scarlet Queen (more on her later) had commanded him to multiply a bag of gold she'd given him; his failure to increase the number of zeroes at the end of the Scarlet Queen's account balance has left him a little on-edge, as he fears what horrible retribution she would have in store for him, should he continue to fail in his quest to produce yet more money for someone who is apparently already royalty. So right off the bat, you'd assume we have our villain in the form of the Scarlet Queen, correct? A vengeful monarch obsessed with gold and negligent to the needs and concerns of her underlings; again, I ask you to just stick with me here. There's a turn coming, and it'd be a damn shame if you were to miss it.

As the troll meanders off to contemplate what hellish torment surely awaits him at the hands of the Scarlet Queen, Strawinsky decides to leave his friends to their books and explore the remainder of the house. He comes across an anthropomorphic cello who explains how she used to belong to the Scarlet Queen; the cello feels understandably forgotten (dare I say, foresaken?) at having been left to rot in a dusty old house by its previous owner. Strawinsky, ever the empathetic paragon of virtue, decides to leave the cello to its wallowing and return to the basement. It's here that he meets the true star of the show, The Globglogabgalab. Essentially, he's a massive, obese, shape-shifting slug man who feeds on the knowledge of books for sustenance. As he explains in his transcendentally bad pan-flute rap song, he is "the yeast of thoughts and minds".

This is arguably the most important moment in the entire movie, since this is where David Hutter lays all his cards on the table and reveals what this film is really about. It's like sitting in a time-share presentation; you know the sale is coming, but you're not sure when until it's too late. Up to this point, it had just been another incompetently made kids' movie with your standard sweatshop CGI, but it's after Strawinsky meets The Globglogabgalab (I refuse to type that out anymore, so hence forth he shall be referred to as G-Man) that things take a hard, sinister turn into Orwellian propaganda. After his disquieting rap number, Strawinsky floats the idea over to G-Man that maybe, just maybe, he should be careful about the books he consumes; maybe it's not a good idea to read books at all, because they can fill your head with dangerous ideas.

As if this message railing against the perils of free-thought wasn't clear enough, we then find out that all of Strawinsky's friends have turned into zombies because they read too many books. Distraught that his loyal sheep friends have grown self-aware and disappeared from the flock, Strawinsky begins desperately praying to Jesus Christ The Scarlet Queen. She arrives in a great pillar of light, leaving the troll and G-Man looking like they were just caught with their hands on the golden calf. After stroking Strawinsky's comatose buddies back to peak woke-ness (yes, the narrator uses the word "stroking"), the Scarlet Queen explains the origin of G-Man; once a beautiful forest elf, G-Man soon found himself seduced by those nasty, wicked books. He just fell in love with the written word, to the point that he grew fat and ugly. This was apparently a punishment bestowed on G-Man by God the great Elohim, an unseen deity who exerts his almighty whim on the poor pathetic pawns who populate the Earth.

It's also here that we learn about Satan the Ratking, who shows up for exactly one scene to tempt our heroes(?) through song. Faced with Strawinsky's incessant evangelizing, G-Man relents and decides to give up his precious, stupid books in favor of devoting himself to the teachings of Christianity whatever religion followers of Elohim keep up with. Despite G-Man making the correct(?) choice and bending the knee to her Scarlet-ness, the narrator makes it painfully clear that, although he has earned his seat at the table in the afterlife, he will never regain his old, beautiful body. G-Man will remain fat and misshapen for all eternity, as punishment for his heinous transgression of reading. As we all know, if there's one thing Jesus is super big on, it's petty retribution. Traits like forgiveness and "turning the other cheek" are for the other, weaker messiahs. The troll, meanwhile, decides not to follow the way of the Scarlet Queen, only because he is so terrified of the prospect of her retribution. As the Scarlet Queen ascends into the great hereafter with her cello, we're left to assume that the fires of Hell await the troll whenever he kicks the bucket (likely whenever the Scarlet Queen finds out he didn't make all that gold for her). Everyone goes home, Strawinsky vows to dedicate his life to the great Elohim, and I'm left feeling horrendously filthy for what I've just witnessed.

Is there even anything left to say at this point? I want to make myself clear, there is nothing wrong with being religious. So long as you're not harming anyone, feel free to believe in whatever you please. But I draw the line at outright propaganda, especially when it's propaganda that's shamelessly targeted at children. Taking a child to Church on Sunday is one thing, but sitting them down in front of a cartoon that outright says that God won't ever truly forgive you if you decide to read books is something entirely different. Never before have I seen such a self-destructive endorsement of organized religion; it practically comes off like satire made by a militant atheist. The positive side of religion is literally portrayed as blissful ignorance and blind allegiance while any attempt to gain knowledge is shown to be the work of the Devil. Normally, I can brush off media that's simply incompetent, but that's hardly what we're dealing with here. And yes, I recognize the irony of saying "don't watch this media that presents dangerous ideas, it pushes a narrative that we should avoid media with dangerous ideas". I'm not saying not to watch this; just don't subject your kids to this dreck. Consider Strawinsky and the Mysterious House a "must-see" in my book, just make sure you've got some manner of mind-altering substance on hand before you hit play.

Best Boys Episode 2: Runaway Segue

On this brand-new episode of Best Boys, Mark and Chris embrace the long-forgotten art of the random tangent, forgetting literally every actor's name along the way. Featuring discussion on Wreck-It Ralph 2, The Grinch, Black Panther, and Avengers: Infinity War! Check it out!