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Poster for Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
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Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael

Director: Jim Abrahams Run Time: 95 min. Format: 35mm Rating: PG 13 Release Year: 1990

Starring: Winona Ryder, Jeff Daniels, Laila Robins, Thomas Wilson Brown, Ava Fabian

Having secured her status as morbid weirdo, first as goth Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice (1988), then as Veronica Sawyer in Heathers (1989), Winona Ryder was relatable to a generation of girls who felt ready to embrace their innate strangeness, to break free of conformity to a feminine standard.

In Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, she is at her most scrappy, spending most of the film’s run time in an oversized dyed-black sweater with tangled hair, terrorizing people with her intensity. As Dinky Bosetti, she is a slouching outsider, adopted by parents who disapprove of her, spending most of her time dreaming of escape.

Though it never achieved the cult status of the other films mentioned above, to some, Roxy Carmichael was formative in that it was rare for a character like Dinky – shy, angsty, earnest – to be front and center.

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