I’ve wanted to see it for years, but I keep hearing that it’s terribly disturbing. I really like disturbing movies, but for some reason, I’m terrified to see this one.
Will someone please tell me what the big deal is. It won’t ruin the movie for me if I still want to see it. While you’re at it, please spoil “Happiness” too.
Thanks in advance.
Well, there IS a “plot” of sorts, but that’s not the disturbing part, since the one EXTREMELY horrible thing that you think MIGHT happen doesn’t really happen.
What’s disturbing is the portrait of the miserable life of a misfit girl in junior high school. She’s isolated, picked on, teased, bullied, and ignored by her family.
No one thing that happens stands out as “disturbing” in the sense that, say, Mr. Blonde’s cop-torture scene in “Reservoir Dogs” was disturbing. Rather, every day of her liufe is FILLED with small moments of humiliation.
It’s a gloomy, depressing movie that seems to say, “This kid’s life, like many of our lives, sucks, and will probably never get significantly better.”
I don’t remember any specific details, but I hated Welcome To the Dollhouse AND Happiness. Both are disturbing, depressing, and uncomfortable to watch to the point of being painful.
The major disturbing moment I can think of is when one of the boy’s at school tells her that he’s going to rape her. He never goes through with it and they eventually become friends.
In another sequence, she purposefully doesn’t tell her little sister where she’s supposed to go to after school and the little girl ends up being kidnapped.
Perhaps. But unlike “Welcome to the Dollhouse” I thought “Happiness” was actually rather uplifting. The sons masturbatory ejaculation at the end, stimulated by watching a sunbathing woman, signalled that, despite his fathers’s pedophillia (and perhaps because the father dropped all his facades during that one very brutal father/son conversation), he seemed to have developed into a normal boy who will probably be capable of having a happy life.
I think astorian put it pretty well.
It’s not realy any particualr thing that happens that’s disturbing really…just the excruitating examination of human isolation and humilition. It’s the accuracy with which it’s portrayed that’s so painful to watch. (and yes, that’s a good review from me)
And after you see Welcome to the Dollhouse, every time you see Heather Matarazzo (who plays Dawn) in anything, you’ll always see her as Wiener Dog. The same goes for Dylan Baker, who plays the pedophile dad in Happiness.
You’re right. It was jarring to see him as Dr. Curt Connors in Spider-Man 2, especially knowing that he will eventually become The Lizard.