The trailer and main poster for Bottoms positions it as such: “From the producers of Pitch Perfect and Cocaine Bear“. Quite the Venn diagram. Putting aside the fact that neither of those two films are particularly good, one can kind of see where Bottoms finds the common ground between them. It is a female-led school comedy like Perfect, but it is also an extremely absurd satire, with a flippancy toward violence that suggests the only function of gruesome death is for yucks (like Cocaine Bear). So we can connect the dots. Lucky for us, Bottoms is actually a good movie, one that takes genuine risks with tone and still manages to be funny from throughout. Writer-director Emma Seligman has a solid authorial voice, unworried about audience expectation, and she uses that to her advantage, making one of the better comedies of the year.

The film is a reunion between Seligman and actress Rachel Sennott, who also collaborated on the 2020 indie hit, Shiva Baby. Shiva Baby is in many ways a definitive successful indie debut: an efficient script that takes advantage of its limited resources to create a film that’s modest in scale but substantial in effect. It also contains a performance from Sennott that showcases a preternatural understanding of the bounds between comedy and drama. The film introduced Seligman as a filmmaking force and boosted Sennott beyond her insulated social media fame. In Bottoms, Sennott stars opposite Ayo Edibiri, the actor known primarily as the co-lead of the hit series The Bear. On The Bear, Edibiri also gets to show off her own range between genre and tone – the series often gives her more complex emotional arcs than the supposed main star, Jeremy Allen White.

Sennott and Edibiri play PJ and Josie, respectively, two gay high schoolers on the cusp of their senior year desperate to finally lose their virginity. Josie has a crush on Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), a cheerleader who dates the football team’s beloved quarterback, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine). PJ is obsessed with Brittany (Kaia Gerber), Isabel’s statuesque best friend. PJ is feverishly attempting to come up with a plan to turn Isabel and Brittany into their girlfriends, while Josie is resigned to her loser status. In school, they are complete outcasts, the victims of frequent locker vandalism, even the principal announces them as the “ugly, untalented gays”. The school’s main concern is an upcoming football game with the local rival, a match up that goes beyond program tension but often promises legitimate violence between the two schools, on and off the field.

This is when PJ and Josie decide to create a female self-defense club – or, more simply, a fight club. Using the fear of threats from the incoming rival, the two girls convince others to join under the rouse of learning to protect yourself. The real reason they’re starting the club? To get closer to Isabel and and Brittany. Despite their ulterior motives, the club does end up providing some help for many who get involved. For Hazel (Ruby Cruz), the club is a safe space for women to feel empowered. For Isabel, it’s a chance to let out her frustrations with Jeff’s frequent infidelity. PJ and Josie position themselves as leaders, telling a fictional story about toughening up after a summer in juvie. The story, an obvious lie, nevertheless provides this group of girls solace in knowing that there is a place where they can let their rage fly.

Bottoms is playing a delicate balancing act. The script by Sennott and Seligman pulls no punches in its depiction of the school: basically a festering pit of extreme sexism that enables its most infantile, insecure men into becoming vindictive and violent monsters. The script is good enough to keep the humor front and center, a large dose of mint atop an acid mojito. Considering its much lower profile, Bottoms will probably avoid controversies courted by Barbie, where a very real group of infantile, insecure men cried of improper depiction of their gender. Even so, Barbie did itself no favors by extending an olive branch to the very men it satirized. Bottoms is pure scorched Earth. A film where the humor is so soaked in darkness it doesn’t even give you the courtesy of a knowing wink.

Sennott and Edibiri are two actors who’ve already proven their talent. Their mastery of the script – their instinctive knowledge of when to play sincere and when to lean into the story’s absurdity, and which method will get a bigger laugh when – is the key to everything that Seligman has put together. Sennott has already had a few solid film performances, but this is Edibiri’s first lead film role. Her innate sensitivity played against Sennott’s brashness is a new take on the classic odd couple. That said, both of them find ways to play against the trope, defy expectation, and give performances that are both hysterically funny and rich with character. Zamani Wilder, Summer Joy Campbell, Dagmara Dominczyk, and Miles Fowler round out a terrific ensemble that presents varied comedic styles that all complement one another.

If Shiva Baby was a triumph in small scale filmmaking, Bottoms is proof that Seligman can still succeed with even more. The movie’s shot palette is less interesting than Shiva, possibly a result of a lot of improvisation on the set (among everything else, Bottoms has a classic blooper real over its end credits). While I’m more than fatigued with films that have obvious improv throughout their scenes, Bottoms is an example of it done well, and Seligman cuts the film with discernment, selecting funny lines but never meandering down side quests of performance ego. Lastly, I have to mention the stunt casting of former NFL player Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G, the school’s unqualified history teacher. Lynch plays pretty much the only man in the film who isn’t wholly despicable. The choice is inspired because of Lynch’s obvious charm, but Seligman utilizes the Super Bowl champion perfectly, presenting him as a veteran performer. Now that’s good directing.

 

Directed by Emma Seligman