Bottoms
Bottoms will join the ranks of Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, and Clueless for being the ultimate teen experience sleepover movie.
From eccentric gags such as a test on a Women in Murdered History test to water being poured on cheerleaders equating to actual performance, Bottoms embraces an absurdist approach to the high school movie genre. To fit the idea of a female fight club being allowed on a high school campus, Bottoms needs to be as ridiculous as possible to make it a wild ride.
PJ and Josie are lesbian best friends at the bottom of their high school hierarchy. Their classmates don’t hate them because they are gay; it is because they are gay, ugly, and untalented. As they are about to enter their senior year, they have one goal in mind: to lose their virginity. After a poor attempt to win over their cheerleader crushes, Isabel and Brittany, at the school fair involving an incident with the football captain and rumors about them being in juvie over the summer, they start a fight club.
For the last few years, we have had a lot of films trying to replicate the high school films of the 2000s and they can never quite capture the campy nature of their precedents. A majority of the time, they feel like they were written by AI or by someone who has never walked into a high school. Director Emma Seligman is one of the few to understand the teen experience; and perfectly execute it on the screen. There is a preoccupation with technology to represent today’s younger generation, but Seligman doesn’t define her film by a year but as a universal experience. She understands the awkwardness of high school, especially the gay teen experience. Her fight club is a means to liberate these young women that don’t hold black on their horniness and violence.
Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott are the comedic duos of their generation. Their effortless chemistry perfectly plays off one another by creating distinct fleshed-out characters that don’t overshadow each of their individual stories. Sennott as PJ is the more dominating friend while Edebiri plays Josie as the level-headed amongst the two. Their comedy weirdly feels reminiscent of Seinfeld with the multiple jokes per minute of 30 Rock, which makes it so much better given the context. The dialogue flows naturally as they are ready for every turn that comes their way in the film. They are unbearable people, but they don’t have to be likable for you to root for them.
Bottoms is a spiritual sibling to Not Another Teen Movie, largely thanks to its supporting cast that understands their assigned archetypes. The range of characters varies from a religious girl, an incompetent football player played by the twinky Nicholas Galitzine, a pansexual cheerleader, and a supportive teacher with no boundaries. The ensemble is full of unhinged weirdos that don’t fall victim to caricatures. They feed into the groups they represent by overplaying and commenting on the traits that make them who they are.
Underneath the weirdness, Seligman and Sennott present a moving story of friendship. PJ and Josie are bonded through all the absurdity that grounds the chaos. Seligman allows her characters to find space to achieve growth and discovery in this world that pushes them down. Successfully balancing all this in one script is an impressive feat for Seligman’s direction. She highlights the plight of everyday teenagers through an unconventional, hormonal approach with a high body count.
Bottoms certainly pays homage to its influences but is able to craft its own identity for a newer moviegoing generation.