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hell is other people in ben franklin junior high it was all appropriate timing as far as the first time i saw this. i was through the hell of my last year in "middle school" (technically it was "intermediate" since it was only 7th and 8th) and i particularly when through a painful and confusing situation to boot. my younger brother was sick and my mom decided to rent something. she was going through her sundance phase and this title caught her eye because it was the winner of the grand jury prize from sundance in 1996. then i showed up and they told me: "you gotta see this." and suddenly i was taken into a world seen through the eyes of someone who ... let's be honest, she doesn't dress well at all. the colours are always some type of pastel and they never sit well together. the tone is still elementary school. no wonder she gets picked on ... that and for other reasons. but at any rate, you see the hell she has to go through: the "cheerleaders" calling her lesbian (and the outsider girl encouraging it), the "drug dealers" taunting her and her standing is so low that even the down-trodden nerd says half-weezing "leave me alone, weiner-dawg." and you would think the home would be some kind of sanctuary from all the woes and despair of the junior high universe. #$%! no. her older brother is obsessed with his "college resume" that he tries to start a band, initially a three-piece involving keyboards, drums and a clarinet (and it didn't sound like "satisfaction" either). her younger sister perpetually wears her tutu and acts cute for her mother. she is the middle child and is typically overlooked ... unless she does something wrong. so all in all, she is not encouraged or supported by anybody. the few moments where she is acknowledged and even respected is 1) few and far between and 2) arises out of the strangest circumstances. but those moments are what makes the open-ending a bit more hopeful than what we started ... maybe there is life after junior high. and that's what a lot of people come away with after seeing this. yes, junior high was awful. did it constitute the same experiences of dawn weiner (yes, that is her name ... doomed from the start i'll tell you)? no ... hopefully you weren't cursed with a dickensian name like dawn weiner. but in spite of the huge gap of "suckiness" between your experience and hers, there is a common ground: there is a hell; hell is other people and they at some point in their lives attended benjamin franklin junior high school in west caldwell, nj email this review to a friend
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