Not 15 minutes into the new comedy Bottoms, our teenage heroes have already told us their intention to have as much sex as possible with other girls at their high school, they’ve taken out the leg of the school’s star quarterback ahead of the big game with their major rival, and they’ve started an all-girls fight club that’s overseen by former NFL star Marshawn Lynch. I’m sure I missed a few things in there, too.
In short, Bottoms is nuts. And you have to decide pretty quickly if you’re going to get on board with what it’s offering, because its bursts of absurdity don’t stop. This was not at all a difficult decision for me, since the movie is so committed to itself that I could only admire it, and I laughed—a lot, and sometimes very loudly.
PJ and Josie are the two girls we follow as they hope to bed their classmates—specifically, Josie is interested in the girlfriend of the aforementioned quarterback, and there’s some indication the girl is interested in Josie, too. And, frankly, I don’t even know why I’m starting to tell you the plot of the movie, because part of the delight is in watching it unfold, and more is in seeing how ridiculous it all gets. Most everyone is cartoonish, as is the violence, which is substantial, but this all also creates surprise, which is, of course, crucial in comedy. Many of my whoops of laughter were because, well, I did not see that coming.
This is director Emma Seligman’s second film after 2020’s claustrophobic comedy Shiva Baby, which was a movie that also fully committed, in a different way. She’s written this one with her star from both films, Rachel Sennott, who clearly gets Seligman’s wavelength, and the two are kind of remarkable together. They give it everything they’ve got, as does just about everyone in this movie, and it’s hard not to be impressed when people approach their work with this much gusto. By the end, we can only applaud, or at least we can applaud the people who are left standing.
Bottoms is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
This episode originally aired on August 31, 2023.
