‘Bottoms’ Movie Review: A High School Comedy On Its Own Anarchic Wavelength
Photo from MGM
From Jeremy Kibler
Raunchy, brazen, and often anarchic, Bottoms plays like a meaner, more progressive distant cousin to a John Hughes comedy with a shot of Fight Club. Director Emma Seligman co-wrote the script with her friend and collaborator Rachel Sennott (the lovable rising star after standing out in the ensemble of Bodies Bodies Bodies) as their sophomore effort to Seligman’s 2021 writing-directing feature debut Shiva Baby. Whereas that indie was an anxiety attack framed through a twentysomething Jewish girl’s experience, but also very funny, Bottoms is just as specific and funny, albeit in a much rowdier, R-rated sex comedy kind of way.
Sennott and Ayo Edebiri (Theater Camp and TV’s The Bear) play PJ and Josie, two unpopular lesbian friends in their senior year of high school who know their place. Because they both don’t know how to talk to their respective cheerleader crushes, Brittany (Kaia Gerber, dead-ringer daughter of Cindy Crawford) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), their lives are over. That is until Josie simply offers Isabel a ride away from cheating quarterback boyfriend Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) during an argument, and though not a single punch is thrown, the rumor around school the next day is that Josie beat him up. This stretched truth—and a little white lie that they killed girls in juvie—makes PJ and Josie look like badasses and spirals into them starting a girls’ self-defense club (read: a fight club where girls go wild and throw punches). If they can get Brittany and Isabel to join, maybe they can get into their cheer skirts, too.
Up front, Bottoms establishes a distinctly heightened tone. It’s profane and hyper-verbal but also just plain absurd. Comparisons to Heathers, American Pie, Mean Girls, Superbad, and Booksmart are apt, but there’s a singularity to the tone. Some high school comedies try to be as accurate as possible, while Bottoms commits to being set in its own casually loony alternate reality. The football players live in their jerseys and shoulder pads. The principal can get away with calling PJ and Josie “the ugly, untalented gays” when having them report to his office over the PA system. In the background of a classroom, there’s a football player in a cage. Class also lasts approximately two minutes. Oh, and there’s a, um, fight club after school?
Super-smart and incisive without being didactic, the film is never about these misfit underdogs trying to fit into a clique per se but about making the popular cheerleaders feel empowered for PJ and Josie’s own selfish reasons. The ever-conventional falling-out among friends (spoiler alert!) is just inherent in a high school comedy now, but without it, we wouldn’t get an utterly perfect Avril Lavigne musical cue. Otherwise, director Seligman and Sennott’s script is sweet underneath the bloody noses and bawdiness but never gets sentimental or loses its chutzpah.
As PJ and Josie, Sennott is blunt, acerbic and unapologetic; Edebiri is awkward and cautious; and their individual comedic styles sparkle together. Next to their gangbusters, completely authentic chemistry, the supporting cast is terrific. So many of the characters are ridiculous and over-the-top types but grounded by the deadpan sincerity the performers bring. Ruby Cruz is endearing but has more to her, as Hazel, PJ and Josie’s sort-of, kind-of friend; Havana Rose Liu (No Exit) showcases sly comic timing (there’s a funny throwaway line about a hoodie) as Josie’s crush; and NFL running back Marshawn Lynch is a dark-horse comedian as Mr. G, the girls’ teacher and “club advisor.” Coming off the charming gay rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue where he played a refined, closeted-but-madly-in-love prince, Nicholas Galitzine proves his versatility by going all in and playing a goofy doofus. There isn’t much to the character that makes Jeff redeemable, but he is the satirical extreme of a jock archetype after all. Also worth noting, the score by Charli XCX is propulsive, and the costume design (from the cheerleaders’ bare midriff tops to our leads’ baggy rugby shirts) is very sharp and character-detailed.
By the end, Bottoms is all about female solidarity as much as it’s about girls wanting to get laid and kick the living shit out of their school rival. As long as one gets on its own outlandish, unruly, often dark, likably weird wavelength, it’s a sure thing Bottoms will find a spot in the annals of the high-school comedy genre. Love it before the cool and popular kids do.
Rating: 4/5
Bottoms is currently in select theaters with a wider release on September 1, 2023.
