Unpopular best friends PJ and Josie start a high school fight club to meet girls and lose their virginity. They soon find themselves in over their heads when the most popular students start beating each other up in the name of self-defense.
Director: Emma Seligman
Cast: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Dagmara Domińczyk, Marshawn Lynch
Release Date: August 25, 2023
Genre: Comedy
Rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language and some violence.
Runtime: 1h 32m
Emma Seligman’s Bottoms is a quick-witted high school teen comedy that takes the general tropes of the genre to an extreme level that pushes it closer to satire than anything else. Seligman and Rachel Sennott, who stars as PJ, cowrote the film’s script which fires off a series of jokes at a rapid pace. There’s a noticeable level of self-assured confidence in the way Seligman shoots the film which pairs perfectly with some top-notch comedic performances from Sennott and Ayo Edebiri. The pair have great chemistry together as they bounce off each other with impressive ease which makes their relationship ring true even as things get more outrageous. Sennott and Edebiri carry the majority of the film with their energy spilling over to the supporting cast. Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine and Miles Fowler are all given plenty of time to shine throughout the film rather brisk runtime. They added a level of depth to the film by populating the school landscape with hilarious caricatures of familiar high school types. Those looking for a truer to life high school comedy might be disappointed since this film plays on a more exaggerated level of reality when compared to something like Booksmart or Lady Bird. Bottoms isn’t that kind of teen comedy, instead it happily stakes out its own gonzo section of the genre to great effect.
A-
