BOTTOMS - Mark Reviews Movies

Bottoms, Orion Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 31, 2023

Existing somewhere between goofy parody and surrealism, Bottoms serves as a strange and thoroughly amusing comedy about the gender dynamics, social hierarchy, and cultural expectations of a seemingly ordinary, all-American high school that is nothing but ordinary—yet definitely American. The film, written by director Emma Seligman and co-star Rachel Sennott, is so defiantly odd in its humor and so pointed in its observations that it barely matters there's no clear message to be found here. Since when did satire have to spell everything out for us, anyway?

The central joke here is that the story exists in some familiar but definitely off-kilter vision of a modern-day high school. In it, football is everything, with pretty much the whole student body and faculty obsessed with an upcoming rivalry game between their team and a long-time opponent. We can recognize that, not only from real life, but also from countless movies, TV shows, and other forms of media about high-school life.

The twist in Seligman's film, though, is that this obsession is plainly unhealthy, something of a mass delusion, and, if posters of the star player standing shirtless and holding a sign encouraging people to "get horny" for the game, inherently sexual. A later scene highlights the school's cheerleaders, who get ready for a big showcase of their skills, only for a couple of them to dump bottles of water on the face and chest of the head cheerleader.

That gag is funny on its own, as a general critique of how women have been traditionally perceived within the world of the more male-dominated sports. Within the context of the high school movies the filmmakers are sending up, it also gets at something a bit more uncomfortable, because this overt sexualizing of teenage girls—usually played by young adults, as is the case here—for a wide and older audience just feels creepy sometimes. If that seems like a stretch, take another scene, in which our main characters and members of their extracurricular fight club try to raise money by selling used underwear to and posing for photos taken by some very creepy older men.

It's not a stretch. It's just part of the many points this film, with its scattershot but surprisingly accurate approach, has to make. The tactic works far more often than it doesn't.

What might have been lost in that description is the fact that, yes, this story primarily revolves around a fight club, organized by best friends Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Sennott), who happen to be lesbians and also might be the most unpopular girls in school. It's not because they're gay, since those times are finished. It's simply because there's absolutely nothing special, unique, or particularly interesting about either of them.

What are these two self-proclaimed and generally acknowledged losers, who have respective crushes on popular girls Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber), to do to get some attention from their unrequited loves? Well, after Hazel (Ruby Cruz) spreads a false rumor that Josie and PJ served some very violent time in juvie, the pair begin a "self-defense" club, which basically amounts to all of its members beating each other bloody and occasionally talking about the reasons they're so angry at the way the world perceives and treats them.

That description of the club might make one think there is a clear-cut message about feminism and/or empowerment to be found within or by the end of the story, but Seligman and Sennott have something deeper and darker in mind. For one thing, it's not as if Josie and PJ are doing this to make a statement. They just want to get closer—and, hopefully, much closer than even that—to Isabel and Brittany. Politics within this world are constantly in flux, taken advantage of, or abandoned entirely when a situation needs it, such as the case of Mr. G (a very funny Marshawn Lynch, the former professional football player), who goes from apathetic, to feminist ally, and to overt sexist within a matter of days based on his experience with the club.

The constants here are sex—of either the nice version that one of our protagonists eventually finds or, more often than not, the exploitative, abusive, two-faced, or discomforting other relationships here—and violence. There is so much violence and so many suggestions of it in this twisted vision of high school, from throwaway lines about PJ joking about getting a gun for self-defense to a goth kid who takes an accidental pelting with fruit as the last straw.

It's disturbing yet cathartic to see this underbelly acknowledged so plainly and in such a subversively comedic way. Beyond the fight club (Its success or failure to teach the girls to beat up people ultimately determines whether they're popular or not, which says something), there's a "prank" that goes awry (simply because one character doesn't comprehend the sarcasm of the line, "Yeah, let's do terrorism"), as well as the discovery that the football rivalry is a far more ferocious affair than insults and rough tackling. There's at least some sense of safety in the intrinsic absurdity of the material's presentation, but that doesn't make the brutality of one fight (between sweetly naïve but tough Hazel and a wrestler who's literally kept in a cage because he's filled with such uncontrollable rage) or a climactic brawl any less barbed in its over-the-top humor and point.

Bottoms is quite funny, even if it is often silly in its approach and discomforting in what it has to say. In fact, the film is funny because it dares to be both ridiculous and uneasy, pushing us to see the world through a warped but eerily in-focus lens.

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