PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are two of the most un-cool girls in their senior class.  As such, they do not have a shot with either of their cool-girl crushes, Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu).  In an elaborate ploy to even be noticed by them, PJ and Josie go along with a rumor that they spent the summer in juvie and use that cred to form a self-defense club that takes the school by storm.  Not everyone is thrilled with the club, notably Tim (Miles Fowler), a football player and best bro to quarterback Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) who finds himself as Public Enemy #1 of the self-defense club after Isabel dumps him for cheating on her… again. 

Bottoms is the reunion of writer/director Emma Seligman with Rachel Sennott, the latter also receiving a writing credit on this sophomore effort after previously starring in Seligman’s Shiva Baby (2020).  Premiering at SXSW, the raunchy teen sex comedy feels nostalgic not only in that it is a genre of the past, but it’s very loose sense of time and place makes it visually feel at home with some of the classics, though is devil-may-care score by Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg gives it some modern flair to perfectly accent some of the auxiliary theme work.  It gained considerable buzz at the festival which carried through to its theatrical release courtesy of United Artists and the excitement around the title only grew from there as it expanded making it one of the break-out indie hits of the year at the Box Office. 

At the forefront of the film, PJ and Josie create a fun and frantic entry point into the story which is good because Bottoms gets off to a very rough start.  Almost immediately, Sennott and Edebiri are caught in this cycle of one-upmanship and it becomes clear that the majority of the comedy will be that of excess in that the jokes will ramble on to the point that what started out as funny has become grating before the script finally moves on to the next bit.  While Edebiri’s Josie is most affected by this in the first half – specifically the scene where she imagines her life married to a gay pastor – it is nice to see her character develop over time and she really manages to home in on a specific voice and timbre for her comedy and perfect her timing.  Sennott continues her abrasive approach to comedy, and it works well, but as the ringleader, it seems that the entire ensemble cast is working to meet her at her level making much of the humor incredibly one-note at best and grating at worst.  She is becoming something of a one-trick thoroughbred in that she is very good at what she is doing, but we have seen almost no range in her, admittedly, young resume.  

As the narrative develops and more characters are introduced, it does begin to expand on its offerings, but much of the humor remains in that frantic way which, to be fair, many of the comedies it is riffing on also adopt a breakneck speed to get through the setups, deliver the punch line, and move on before audiences can try to sort through the premise with any bit of logic or real-world thought.  The situational comedy and the scene work are all quite good, and it does work as a salve to Sennott’s increasingly screeching performance.  Seligman really enjoys punching down on the football team led by the absolutely infantile Jeff, as she sort of questions why high school football is so adored leaving many other aspects of a school underfunded.  Galitzine is totally comfortable debasing himself in front of Maria Rusche’s camera – a winking inversion of the air-head cheerleader trope, though Britney and Isabel certainly do not seem like they will be graduating cum laude – and importantly, does not steal the scene away from any of the girls in the club.  He and Seligman find the perfect balance for Jeff who could otherwise be an absolutely irritable character in his absurdity. 

Bottoms is at its strongest when it capitalizes on the absurd because it fully accepts that there are no rules and does away with trying to take a stand for anything.  This is evidenced in the final 30 or so minutes of the 91-minute runtime when Seligman pulls out all the stops in a totally ludicrous finale that is ushered in by a great Avril Lavigne needle drop, but this thrown-to-the-wind attitude can be seen as rightfully repulsive by many given what unfolds.  The melee on the football field is a delight to watch from a filmmaking standpoint, but thematically, it catapults Bottoms into an uncomfortable realm of which it spent the preceding hour just walking along the borderline; an area which it is either ill-equipped or uninterested in reckoning with. It all starts off with an incredibly uncomfortable pep rally where Tim calls down the meek Hazel (Ruby Cruz) – the runaway scene stealer of the entire film – to show what she has learned in the fight club by squaring off against the school’s star wrestler (Cameron Stout). The match begins and the two spar back and forth, but eventually ends with Hazel on the ground and suffering a brutal kick to the head from the wrestler leaving her bloodied and alone in the middle of the basketball court as students and staff quickly make their exit without so much as a mumbling whisper as to what they just witnessed. So much for solidarity.

That PJ and Josie barely recognize what happened here – because the club was never meant for Hazel so she is just unfortunate collateral in their quest to get laid – it leaves a really gross feeling behind, and while this is a world where there are no consequences as evidenced in how the only reaction to Jeff’s car being blown up by the fight club comes from Tim, for audiences in the real world, Bottoms crosses a major line here and it is just about to get worse. At the football game, it similarly goes to a darker place, but lacks the careful nuance needed in dark comedy and satire so instead of the joke landing, it feels incredibly out of touch as the camera pans over a field littered with dead students. For as in tune as the film had been in some aspects, it seems unlikely that Seligran is unaware of what she is doing here, so to give her the benefit of the doubt it is just a failed attempt at commentary because the more insidious reading is that she just did not care about the implications of ending her film by treating a high school massacre as a joke even if it did not involve a gun. 

Bottoms is a film about a lot of ideas but fails to really bring anything of substance to the screen. It is hard to make a point when the cast of characters are lacking a true lead. PJ and Josie fill this role by sheer saturation of screen time, but as far as characters go, they feel more like supporting characters in a better film. Everyone just exists in this bizarro world, bouncing against each other with Loony Tunes resiliency. Thankfully, its script does not feel like it was written by assembling TikTok comments from teens self-diagnosing their trauma a la Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (2022) – another Sennot-starrer – but it does not seem all that interested in saying anything at all, either. It is not sharp enough to lampoon the teen sex comedy from which it draws inspiration, nor does it feel comfortable or confident enough to make any comments on female empowerment, representation, the prevalence of violence against women, or sexuality; all major topics of the jokes that never actually build up to form a coherent thesis. Behind the camera, Seligman has shown she is capable of working with acuity, even here, but the thematic looseness makes Bottoms an instantly forgettable experience.