Bottoms Review: The Teen Comedy Genre Gets A Much-Needed Kick In The Ass (2024)

Editor's note: 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.

The teen comedy has long felt like a dying art since its heyday in the early 2000s. There have been gems since then, of course — think the heartfelt Edge of Seventeen or the raunchy Blockers. Still, Hollywood has struggled to find a place for the genre as the mid-budget movie disappears in favor of mega-budget franchises. Now, Bottoms is here to save us all. A Fight Club meets Superbad riff, director Emma Seligman's R-rated romp is violent and riotous, proving once more that Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri are stars. Bottoms may not lean into the full absurdity of its premise, but the film is unafraid to be mean, its acerbic wit and go-for-broke premise creating an "anything goes" feeling that is sorely missing from not just the high school comedy, but from movies as a whole.

Sennott and Edebiri star as "ugly, untalented gays" PJ and Josie, two Rockbridge Falls High Schoolers who are looking to get laid, but can't seem to figure out how to talk to anyone, let alone the objects of their affection. After a run-in with quarterback Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), the pair decide to start a self-defense-class-cum-fight-club. Under the guise of female empowerment, they recruit girls from Rockbridge Falls for their after-school meetings in the hopes that their crushes, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber), will eventually come and sleep with them once PJ and Josie impress them with their fighting skills.

Naturally, things spiral from there, but just how off the rails things go may surprise you. The script is from Seligman and Sennott, who, along with Edebiri, have been longtime friends. Seligman and Sennott previously collaborated on indie breakout Shiva Baby, but this is their most high-profile project to date. If it doesn't lead to more for the trio, it would be a missed opportunity. Edebiri, who has already been Emmy nominated for her role in The Bear, is a comedic force to be reckoned with, as is Sennott, who solidified her breakout status in last year's horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies. Seligman, too, has become a voice to look out for after Shiva Baby and now Bottoms.

Sennott and Edebiri seem more than comfortable with the sheer level of absurdity at which Bottoms operates, but some of the jokes don't quite land where they need to. The film is clearly set in some hyper-stylized version of reality, and it could've done well in leaning even more into the absurd. The scenery is peppered with surprising imagery — you may find yourself asking why there is a high schooler kept at the back of a classroom in a cage or recognizing the football team sitting like The Last Supper at lunch in front of a recreation of The Creation of Adam. These flourishes certainly serve to flesh out Bottoms' world, but there is a feeling of disconnect between the sensory overload and some of the more grounded moments in the film.

Fortunately, these grounded moments don't get in the way of an all-time great climax that cements Bottoms as one of, if not the best, teen comedy of the 2020s so far. To spoil anything here would ruin much of the fun, but Bottoms keeps upping the ante until it's a full-on, ultraviolent spectacle. During the summer of Barbie, it's no surprise that a film like Bottoms can thrive. Men, in both high school comedies and the genre as a whole, have long been allowed to be crude, violent, horny, and creepy. Bottoms lets women do the exact same thing to hysterical results. It's messy and more than a little bit chaotic, and it also has Marshawn Lynch, who continues to prove himself a comedic force to be reckoned with. Bottoms nearly has it all and even where it falls short, it is still far bolder than much of anything released by major studios in the last few years.

Bottoms is now playing in theaters. The film is 92 minutes long and rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language and some violence.

Bottoms

Bottoms is a sex comedy film that follows two high school girls determined to hook up with cheerleaders before they graduate. To accomplish this, they decide to start a fight club to power their way up to the top of the food chain.