Say this about Todd Solondz, he won't be making any Disney films anytime soon. The off-beat indie filmmaker, who came onto the scene ten years ago in his landmark scathing comedy Welcome to The Dollhouse returns to the scene with this sequel (kind of) to his first film masterpiece in angst and anomie. However something is decidedly lost in the translation of dysfunctional families in suburbia.

The film begins with the closed-casket funeral of Dollhouse’s WienerDog, Dawn Wiener, who has committed suicide apparently so awfully that we cannot even get a glimpse of her as her sullen, nerd brother Mark (Matthew Faber reprising his role) offers a solemn eulogy, where their cousin is introduced.

Solondz employs a gimmick of using an octet of actresses of different races, ages and shapes in his bizarre story about a pre-adolescent girl named Aviva (note the titular affectation) whose only dream to come true - to have lots and lots of babies - is explored at arm's length much to the dismay of her manic/depressive mother Joyce (Ellen Barkin in one of her finer moments) who is shocked when Aviva in fact gets impregnated on her first seriously awkward encounter with a neighbor's heinous son that leads her and her spouse Steve (vet character actor Richard Masur) to force Aviva to abort.

What happens next is Aviva running away from home to be discovered by a family of adopted children of different backgrounds and with some handicaps all under the roof of the Christian Mama Sunshine (Debra Monk) and her evangelical husband Bo (Walter Bobbie) - who both seem too good to be true with their altruistic intentions. Here their brood of misfits take on a creepy underscore reminiscent of the cult classic Freaks but Solondz does manage to give his real-life challengers moments of humanity that all are but evident in the decidedly ugliness of what transpires.

Of the eight actresses who portray the clueless Aviva, Sharon Wilkins stands out as the most memorable if not largely for her zaftig woman-child interpretation with her borderline gargantuan stature (the impression is of a giantess growing in mid-transformation with the sundresses nearly bursting from her ample body) but displays some real emotion in her confusion and dismay at just wanting to be loved and to love someone that makes her few moments onscreen so memorable. A haggard looking Jennifer Jason Leigh also shocks in her seemingly drugged turn before the film’s end.

Solondz’s puree of pornographic elements, pedophilia, right-wing Born Again Christianity, pre-marital sex and the handicap feel uneasy - and arguably exploitive - and that may be the point that he excessively puts on display with a freakshow mentality that gets lost in the translation that we are all one and vice versa.

In this second cousin to Dollhouse the film doesn't cohese easily as its far superior black comic/tragic predecessor but its meanness is all too-apparent as well as the political agenda of what is wrong with America (read: abortion and the Right Wing Christian sects right-to-lifers), yet Aviva does get across one true theme: we are not who we seem to be.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)