Alex Wheeler Movie Ops

You know something’s up with Bottoms when the guys run out in their football uniforms. They’re at a school year kickoff party, not a game, and they’re in full, uncomfortable pads. They remain this way throughout the movie, whether practicing, sitting in class, or scheming against the girl’s new little club, because Bottoms exists in such a crooked world that guys would literally wear their football identities 24/7.

High school movies have done this before, their setting such a peculiar microcosm that pushing reality fits like a glove. Cliques, heavily policed roles, and kids desperately performing to fit in make the whole experience surreal, so movies might as well swing for the fences.

That’s what Bottoms aims to do, but it doesn’t quite hit it over the fence. It wants to be a boundary-pushing comedy that makes you snort from surprise, and while it gets some shocked chuckles, they don’t come a mile and minute.

The slight paucity doesn’t come from any glaring failure. The premise, two queer girls start a self-defense/fight club to land their longtime crushes, is full of realized comedic potential. The jokes are sharp without being too barbed (pay attention to everything Marshawn Lynch’s Mr. G writes on the blackboard). And the cast. The cast is uniformly great, with Rachel Sennott (who also co-wrote) bounding off the reserved energy of Ayo Edebiri for a classic eccentric-straight man dynamic. To steal a joke from Tegan and Sara, she’s not straight, and she’s not a man, but you get the idea.

The pair lead us through the duplicitous plot, their scheming so inept it comes off more loveable than threatening. There’s also that handy break from reality to make sure we aren’t taking things too seriously. Because yes, it’s wrong to lie to your crush to seduce them, but any world where the school yells at you to ‘get horny’ for your football team and doesn’t fire a teacher perusing porn mags during class isn’t to be taken seriously.

Much of this movie is filled with delightfully strange asides like those, making it likely the hilarity will increase upon repeat viewings. The first time out, though, it’s the vibes that shine more than its individual parts. Bottoms has a delightful sense of what it wants to be, and its fervor in going for it makes it easy to forgive its shoddy fight choreography (maybe that’s supposed to be funny?) and the slightly too numerous jokes that don’t land. 

What isn’t forgivable is the thinness of its heart. This is a buddy comedy, at once a group feminist project between the girls in the fight club and a perilous journey into adulthood for the two lifelong friends at its center. Bottoms knows this. It states it more than once. But the depth of comradery between the group is never felt like in The Breakfast Club, and the bond between the two girls pushing and pulling at each other never snaps with the pain of Janis and Cady in Mean Girls.

Those two movies managed to find moments of truth in their zaniness, something Bottoms never quite stops posturing enough to do. The elements for it are there. The group of girls around Sennott’s PJ and Edebiri’s Josie are unique, complementary types (special kudos to whatever Ruby Cruz as their #1 sidekick, Hazel, is doing), and PJ and Josie themselves feel like old friends. But it’s nerve-wracking to be vulnerable enough for these moments, especially when it’s much easier to keep up the facade of a good-time movie. Letting go of facades is sort of the lesson of high school, though. To see Bottoms skirt around the necessity is disappointing, but luckily it doesn’t outright sink the ship.

The film’s energy makes for a lot of goodwill, and the plot goes in such clever directions that it constantly jerks your attention away from any deficits. Director Emma Seligman, who co-wrote with Sennott, pulls off the complicated job of keeping everyone on the same off-kilter beat while letting them riff enough to be personable (stay for the blooper reel over the credits).

Seligman and Sennott have a thing going after previously teaming up for 2020’s Shiva Baby. Their collaboration gives cinema a unique flavor: messy, not-too-serious queer women bumbling through the world. Scarcity gets them brownie points, but their work doesn’t need it. They’re producing sharp, funny movies that stand on their own, and Bottoms should earn them leverage for whatever else they have up their sleeves.

Release: available now in theaters
Director: Emma Seligman
Writers: Emma Seligman, Rachel Sennott
Cast: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Marshawn Lynch