Read Minnie's review first. I did, but it didn't really prepare me for the movie. Nothing prepares a person for a movie like this. I have seen some disturbing movies and I have seen some disturbing scenes in movies. I have seen a very graphic scene of a guy getting raped, but that was as nothing to the NOT seeing it actually happen in this movie. I almost turned the movie OFF if you can take that -- during the last scene of Bill and Billy Maplewood talking. I have never come closer to turning a movie off out of sheer of mental unease before.

This is not a movie you forget or watch just for fun. If you want a for-fun movie, watch Star Wars or American Pie or something... if you want your world flipped upside down and inside out, watch a Todd Solondz movie. Todd Solondz has just become my personal hero in the area of filmmaking. Welcome to the Dollhouse gave my childhood meaning and put it in perspective for me. Happiness is knawing away at the corner of my mind.

Minnie's review covers the plot. Yes, it's about the three Jordan sisters, their parents and the people around them. Joy is a loser. She dumps her loser boyfriend [Jon Lovitz in the most dramatic moment I have seen him in, but which is also kind of funny] and quits her job when he kills himself. She takes a job teaching immigrants or something, but she is essentially a *loser* and nowhere in the movie is there a true glimmer of hope of her amounting to anything in her life. Helen is the self-absorbed one. She's so successfull and all that shit. She's the one that Phil is obsessed with. There is a big deal made of his obscene phonecalls, but he only really makes one in the movie, besides the one he makes to Helen that spurs her interest and so she starts calling him a lot. But when he reveals himself, she rejects him. Some of the best scenes are with Phil and Camryn Manheim [one of my favorite actresses] as two rejected sad persons. It's very good.

Trish is a successfull housewife I guess you could say. She and husband Bill [a psychiatrist and pedarist] have three kids and an apparently happy life. She's not a very good mother from the look of it, but he proves to be a very good father as it goes. Aside from sodomizing two of his son's friends. This storyline was the most disturbing to me, personally. Pedaphilia is not a popular subject for movies AT ALL. And that is another understatement. I mean, consider the controversy surrounding the new film of Lolita, and before that, the older Stanley Kubrick version and before *that* -- the book. So anyway, seeing pedophilia dealt with in such an amoral manner -- meaning only that the film itself passes no judgement on Bill Maplewood. The judgement is left in the hands of the characters and of the audience.

Like Minnie said, child rape is not to be taken lightly and I do not approve of it [as though anyone reallllly *could* APPROVE of such a thing -- I don't even know as those who indulge in it *approve* of it...], but it is a fact of life, just as all unpleasant subjects are facts of life and if we ignore them or pretend that they do not exist, we are living in a state of even more non-reality than we are already. This movie, though, avoids much of the problems that Lolita ran into in that none of Bill's exploits are anything more than insinuated -- no physical advances are shown [anyone who has seen the little movie 'Scum' can sympathize with me on this count...] which is even better than The Shawshank Redemption did...

The movie deals with so many issues that are disturbing and has several scenes and conversations that would make just about anyone squirm. I do not reccommend watching this one with friends or family -- NOT WITH YOUR PARENTS. This is a NOT WITH YOUR PARENTS movie. I also do not reccommend reccommending it to persons you do not know very well unless there is not a good chance of you seeing them again. I will reccommend it to you on the basis of my judgement of the movie as a whole as essentially a GOOD movie to see.

PHil is fat in this movie -- he put on extra weight for it which he has subsequently dropped -- and he is sweaty and he is masterbating and cursing and not cute, as Minnie said. Not cute. But touching and doing an excellent job of acting. This is one where you can watch Phil and know that he is nothing like his character, really, so isn't it cool that he can pull it off so well?

Yeah. It's no wonder that in the US, anyway, the film was not rated. I have no idea if it could have got away with NC-17... *wink* That is all.