Orion Pictures
There’s something eternal about that old high school story where a bunch of twenty-somethings play between five and ten years younger than themselves — and some are more believable than others. If you want to look at it cynically, it allows one to cast young people that are technically not underage but are playing that and put them in overly raunchy and sexual situations that would not fly if they were actually teenagers. On the other hand, it’s not exactly a new tradition — from Grease to Euphoria it has yet to end.
Bottoms comes from director Emma Seligman (with their follow-up from the great Shiva Baby) and co-written with Rachel Sennott, who was also the star of Shiva Baby. Rachel Sennott plays PJ, and her old collaborator Ayo Edibiri (now quite well known) plays her best friend Josie — and the two 27-year-olds play high school seniors who are routinely called ‘ugly’ and ‘untalented’, so there’s definitely some creative license here because that’s obviously absurd.
The movie seems to take place at some point vaguely in the last twenty years, as the characters have flip phones instead of smartphones and don’t even text each other. But this is part of the point, as Emma has described the movie as being inspired by such films as Wet Hot American Summer, which was ridiculous and knowingly cast adults as teenagers for comic effect.
PJ and Josie are unpopular because, according to the movie, they are the ‘ugly, untalented gays’ as opposed to the popular talented gays, we’re shown. PJ aches for popular cheerleader Brittany (Kaia Gerber), the constant hanger-on of even more popular cheerleader Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), who is dating Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) the star of the football team, but is the target of Josie’s affections. So it’s a bit of a retrograde vibe, the two nerds wanting to be with the cheerleaders, just with girls being into girls.
After a series of misadventures and mistakes, the two wind up with a ridiculous plan — create a self-defense ‘fight club’ for the senior girls to overtly help them out but secretly get a way to impress and hook up with them (assuming, of course, that they’re into girls). PJ is the more extroverted one and Josie the more introverted, but both really get into it, with the help of their even less popular sort of friend Hazel (Ruby Cruz).
The cast is rounded out by a pretty funny performance by Marshawn Lynch as their teacher Mr. G (who teaches a vague humanities class because the specifics don’t matter), character actor Wayne Péré as Principal Meyers as the put upon and frenetic voice of tradition, and Jeff’s best pal Tim (Miles Fowler), who is weirdly overly invested in supporting his friend and the football team.
The movie ramps up in its absurdity over time until the finale, which is so ridiculous, it’s simply nonsensically delightful — but the movie gives you the steps to get there so although it tries to shock you a bit, it’s not that shocking (although I did hear some gasps in the audience). The core of the movie is the friendship between the two friends played by real life friends, and both Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edibiri are really excellent comic performers with a great rapport so this makes them likable even when they’re being very unlikable.
A bit of lip service is given to the two love interests, but the movie is really about the friendship and nonsense, heightening everything for comic effect, and doing one third act ‘all is lost’ moment that is quickly forgotten, as to be expected. Although the general structure is pretty familiar, the beats are all specific and weird enough to make this a pretty original take on things — I think Wet Hot American Summer is a great comparison too, because this one plays with drama very lightly and cares far more about making you laugh and care about this bunch of idiots.
Is it as good as Shiva Baby? Well, no, but it’s still highly entertaining and demonstrative of the abilities of the lead actresses and the director — this is the first movie Rachel Sennott has written (or co-written) but honestly? She needs to write more.
Note: We support the current WGA/SAG strike and emphasize the importance of writers and actors and ensuring they and fellow creatives are compensated and treated fairly for their work. This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Bottoms has a run time of 1 hour 32 minutes, and is rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language and some violence.
Orion Pictures
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