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Distinct and Outrageous, Bottoms Comes Out on Top


Bottoms is derivative of a lot of movies. Obviously, it’s plot is a spin on the several decades worth of teen comedies revolving around high school boys trying to get laid -from Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds through to American Pie and Superbad. It’s combination of that typical raunchiness through a feminine approach owes a lot to Booksmart -it’s most obvious point of comparison in the teen comedy genre of late. And then there’s the very fact that it’s central premise capitalizes on a phenomenon directly descended from and named after Fight Club. And yet in spite of all this, Bottoms is a movie incredibly distinct and spontaneous.
A lot of that comes down to its principal creative team: Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, who co-wrote the film together with Seligman directing. Their last movie, Shiva Baby, was one of the most original and thrilling comedies in years; and while Bottoms is decidedly a much more mainstream and conventional effort, they manage to imbue it with just as much energy and character, albeit directed in new ways. Rather than a subtle and simmering humour, it is brazen and outrageous. This is a movie that takes some real swings for the fences, and more often than not they really deliver.
Sennott and Ayo Edebiri star as PJ and Josie, best friend lesbian seniors at their eccentric New Orleans high school, who, after a rumour spreads that they went to juvie over the summer, conspire to start an all-girl fight club as a means of hooking up with their cheerleader crushes. It’s an absurd ploy, but one that is immediately consistent with the tenor of these characters and their world –a broad, dysfunctional and hyperactive parody of high school clichés as much as anything. Because Seligman and Sennott aren’t content to merely flip the gender on an old horny teenager trope, they have to lean in to the ridiculousness of it and extrapolate from that onto the whole high school ecosystem. And so Rockbridge Falls High is a school that worships its football team, giving them priority seating in class, a Last Supper kind of table arrangement in the cafeteria; where the principal is comfortable singling out the “talentless gays” on the P.A. system and where NFL star Marshawn Lynch can be a history teacher. To a more darkly satirical degree, it is also a place where blatant homophobia marks out the lesbians, where multiple kids fantasize about using home-made bombs on their enemies, and where a rival sports team genuinely aspires to kill their opponents.
Seligman punctuates all of these traits in her script with highly energized and compelling direction. There are obvious comic devices to her pacing, her use of cutaways, and especially how she orchestrates and edits the action scenes with visually inventive and irreverent brutality. But then also there are subtler, deliberate shot choices, a couple surprisingly rich long takes, a sensitive atmosphere she employs to a couple necessary sequences, and a tact with which she constructs a melancholy montage scene set (in perfect demonstration of millennial high school angst) to Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”. It’s a remarkable demonstration of versatility for the young filmmaker, whose approach here couldn’t be more distinct from what it was on Shiva Baby.
Her cast no doubt provides a lot of inspiration though. As teenagers, Sennott and Edebiri are not very convincing -although it compliments the mature sensibility of the language and tone not to have younger performers in these parts. And they’re also just really damn good! Sennott has proven her bona fides already as one of the new great comedy talents, and Edebiri caps off a hell of a breakthrough year (The Bear, Theater Camp, Mutant Mayhem, Black Mirror) with the stand-out performance of this movie if there is one. The pair have a great chemistry, no doubt informed by their previous experience as an online double-act, and each gets to showcase a range of their comedic talents. Additionally, Ruby Cruz is a highlight as their deranged friend Hazel, and Nicholas Galitzine plays to a truly inspired jock idiocy as star quarterback Jeff. Virtually everyone in the cast gets a moment to shine or one really good line though -Seligman and Sennott care about distinguishing these characters- with Lynch perhaps most impressive in his first acting job as someone other than himself.
This is all well and good, but the movie does under-serve a few of its characters who the plot would put more stock in. Naturally, the story comes to emphasize the comradery that forms between the girls in this fight club in spite of the deceptiveness of its founding. And yet, beyond PJ, Josie, and Hazel, the movie doesn’t take much interest in any of them. The individual actresses find ways to stand out, but the movie doesn’t do the work to develop their burgeoning friendship much. Even Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber) are defined largely by being the objects of Josie and PJ’s affections -and in the case of Isabel the resigned trophy girlfriend of Jeff. In addition to this, those parts of the movie where Seligman struggles to find ways around her high school clichés –most notably the standard act three break-up of the main friendship- slows the movie’s momentum and engagement, even as they are peppered with funny lines. Any reminder of how unoriginal this movie’s plotting is is jarring.
Fortunately, these aren’t the impressions Bottoms ultimately leaves you with. It goes out in fact on one of the most thrillingly insane, stupid yet smart climactic sequences –of a kind that no other high school comedy in memory would dare to consider. The movie remembers it is about a fight club, and so it hurls a cartoonish violent frenzy shot with stylish intensity into the endgame, paying off several comic beats and character threads in the process –and just making for a whole lot of fun, both for the cast (clearly) and the viewers.
It really is indicative of the effect of the movie itself. Bottoms gets by a lot on that sense of fun, that irreverence that Seligman, Sennott, and Edebiri wield with absolute confidence and gusto. Powering through the tropes of the teen sex comedy genre, but often with subversion or potent exaggeration, it’s hard not to concede oneself to the movie’s infectious energy. And if this were an age of robust studio comedies, it could almost be worthy of Caddyshack for the star capabilities of its cast. A fresh movie, spontaneous, clever and weirdly fulfilling; and I would very much like to see Seligman and Sennott together again soon.

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