Directed by Emma Seligman. Written by Rachel Sennott and Emma Seligman
Emma Seligman’s Bottoms takes a classic teenage comedy mold and pours in every intrusive thought. It ends up half-baked, but damn, it’s also a raucous, fresh try at a known commodity.
PJ (Rachel Senott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are two gay teens desperate to get laid, and to complicate things, they have their sights set on perhaps the two most unattainable girls in school: Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), who dates the school quarterback (obviously), and Brittany (Kaia Gerber) whose icy demeanor and model looks make for an intimidating approach. Nonetheless, PJ is undaunted. The plan: start a school fight club for women, leveraging a school rumor that PJ and Josie spent some time in juvie so they know how to take care of themselves. Prey on feelings of sisterhood and solidarity to cozy up to the targets of their lust.
The harebrained scheme is an homage to similar ill-fated battle plans found in everything from 10 Things I Hate About You to Superbad and it’s only the start, as Bottoms throws horny teens, teenage bonding, and high school archetypes into a blender and starts it up without putting the lid on first.
Everything goes flying all at once. It wants to be silly (the football team are a bunch of weenies idolized for some reason), it wants to be provocative (the classic cheerleading squad car wash fundraiser is replaced by them simply selling their panties), it wants to be loud (things blow up, people get impaled) and it accomplishes everything it puts its mind to.
The question is if it all goes together, and perhaps it doesn’t, but Bottom turns being all over the place to its advantage. It’s a ADHD-riddled rollercoaster of a movie that is messy, outsized, unhinged, rowdy, and even if it moves so fast parts of the plot seem to be missing, it’s hilarious all the way through. This is due to elements that can save any film: a confidence in its own swagger, the novelty of its constellations, and the undeniable chemistry between its cast.
Edebiri and Senott (who also co-wrote Bottoms) spearhead with their performances that remind you of the offbeat dynamic of Ilana and Abbi of Broad City, with Senott channeling Ilana’s uncouth energy and Edebiri providing the bassline as a nervous accomplice with slightly more sense, but still in thrall to the same base desires. Subdued, bemused, but still game. Any scene with either of them in it works. Put them together and it’s alchemy.
Bottoms have so much going for it, yet it can’t quite put it all together and it arrives a bit ramshackle at its conclusion. For other films, it’d mean a middling affair, because many films’ parts aren’t as terrific as those of Bottoms. It’s a vibrant, iconoclastic entry to an established genre that doesn’t just lampoon the past but brings it all up speed. With that momentum, it runs full-tilt at all of its ideas, and even if it stretches thin by the end, it has already earned your appreciation before then.
Mikkel Frederiksen 