Bottoms is now playing in select cities, and opens in theaters everywhere September 1.
Since the invention of the teenager, every generation has had its own version of a teen sex comedy. The ’80s, of course, were the golden age of this bawdy goofball subgenre. The raunchy lesbian fight club in Bottoms calls back to that era, as well as late ’90s teen rom-coms like She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You – although the most accurate comparison would be the 2001 parody that spoofed both those films (plus Can’t Hardly Wait, American Pie, Varsity Blues, and other hits of the day), Not Another Teen Movie.
Filmmaker Emma Seligman’s follow-up to her viral debut Shiva Baby is both a teen sex comedy and an outrageous send-up of the genre. Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Rachel Sennott) are best friends and outcasts facing a terrifying dilemma: What if they graduate from high school, and still no one will have sex with them? “Do you want to be the only girl virgin at Sarah Lawrence?,” PJ asks Josie in the opening scene, as they prepare for a school fair. She can think of no worse fate.
PJ and Josie are lesbians, but that’s not the real reason behind their loser status. The problem is that they’re “gay, untalented, and ugly,” as PJ laments while watching a gaggle of jocks high-five the gays in the Rockbridge Falls High School theater club. In some ways, Rockbridge is a progressive, 21st-century institution. In others, it’s stuck in the athletics-centric hero worship that has defined campus life since before either PJ or Josie were born.
Early on, the principal calls Josie and PJ into his office, accusing them of “crimes against Jeff,” the star quarterback played by Nicholas Galitzine. To get out of it, they fumble their way into a feminist explanation: They’re starting a women’s self-defense club, and were protecting Jeff’s girlfriend Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) by tapping his knee with their car. (Which is true, but not in the way they’re framing it.) And if starting said self-defense club allows them to get pinned to the gymnasium floor by the hottest cheerleaders in school? They’re willing to take on that burden.
The funniest parts of Bottoms are the ones that skewer schools’ slavish preferential treatment of football players. (Think Kenergy, but gross and annoying.) The team sits at a special table in the front of the lunchroom beneath a replica of Michaelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, with Jeff painted into the Adam role. Galitzine plays the role like an oversized infant, and his good-humored performance is key to creating the film’s heightened reality.
Another clever thread that runs throughout Bottoms is tongue-in-cheek commentary on feminism, whose jargon and principles Josie and PJ shamelessly appropriate for their own horny ends. PJ in particular is a flawed, shallow character – she’s 17, give her a break – who takes people like loyal hanger-on Hazel (Ruby Cruz) for granted while obsessing over “hot girls” like Isabel and her bff, Brittany (Kaia Gerber). (“I’m just here because my identity revolves around her,” Brittany explains when she and Isabel show up for self-defense club – a typically self-aware joke in this very self-aware movie.) Will PJ’s selfishness come back to bite her once the plot’s machinations are truly in motion? You’ve seen one of these movies before – what do you think?
Bottoms is funniest when it’s unabashedly silly and a little dumb. The best supporting performances are the ones that lean into this truth, like Marshawn Lynch’s turn as a teacher who’s too preoccupied with his divorce to pay much attention to what the girls are doing in the gym after school. (Beating each other senseless, that’s what.) Sennott and Edebiri have more of a challenge trying to convey a realistic friendship: Their characters are just as superficial as the rest, but their conflicts are more grounded. And while the lively chemistry between the stars takes them most of the way, the film’s commitment to glibness does make its relationships less satisfying.
The sections of the script that are packed with hyper-articulate quips in the Booksmart mold are more variable. A lot of these lines are very funny, but they can come off as trying too hard – particularly when they’re paired with gloriously stupid background gags like an eatery called “But I’m A Diner.” Compared to the joke-a-second dialogue, the physical comedy is disappointingly restrained: Sennott proves herself willing to take a punch for comedy (or Sapphic lust, whatever) many times over. But the “fight club” portions lean more bloody than slapstick, adding another tone to a movie that’s already juggling multiple moods.
Even the music has a lot going on, combining Charli XCX’s ’80s-style synth score with hilariously timed needle drops from Avril Lavigne and Bonnie Tyler. An excess of material is far from the worst problem a comedy can have, to be fair. But when the joke machine is on overdrive for every second, as it is here, it ends up becoming a pummeling wall of hilarity with little room to breathe. But hey – these girls like getting the wind knocked out of them. Who are we to judge?
