For all the proclamations that Gen Z is filled with Puritans who bemoan the inclusion of sex scenes in movies and TV shows, young queer people sure are obsessed with begging their crushes to beat them up. Lurking between these shock-humor pleas for Sandra Oh to run us over with a car or for Phoebe Bridgers to hit us over the head with a hammer is pure nihilistic horniness; there’s no actual fucking involved, but in an era when fatalism and absurdism often overlap in increasingly strange ways, it makes sense that this brand of yearning has gone mainstream.
Not that Bottoms wants you to think about all that too hard. Sure, a similar kind of hormonal, violence-tinged homoeroticism cuts through the heart of director Emma Seligman’s hilariously gonzo follow-up to 2020’s Shiva Baby. But while Shiva Baby unfurled like an 87-minute-long, steadily mounting anxiety attack, its situational cringe comedy remained firmly rooted in reality. The same can’t be said for Bottoms, and that’s all the better for it.
Whereas Shiva Baby focused narrowly on its sole protagonist (played by Rachel Sennott), Bottoms’ infectious energy stems from the well-worn friendship between its two lead characters, PJ (Sennott, who also co-wrote the screenplay) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri). There are only three things you need to know about them right off the bat: They’re inseparable, they’re gay, and they’re bona fide high school dweebs.
The film is quick to point out that PJ and Josie aren’t outcasts because they’re gay; after all, the theater kids get around just fine. Instead, they attribute their perpetual misfit status to being boring, untalented slackers. This is the future It Gets Better dreamed of! (Side note: If you’re also queer and beset with terminal imposter syndrome, don’t be surprised if an early moment in which the school principal calls the “ugly, untalented gays” to his office feels like it was ripped directly from the corners of your psyche.)
Given that their campus culture seems to revolve around brutish football jocks, the duo are eager to leave high school behind. There’s just one problem: They’re scared shitless of showing up to their respective liberal arts colleges next year having only been gay in theory, not in practice. As the bossy PJ asks her mild-mannered best friend in the very first scene: “Do you want to be the only girl virgin at Sarah Lawrence?!”
PJ and Josie’s hopes of getting some before graduation are further complicated by their crushes on dreamy cheerleaders Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), the latter of whom is dating football bonehead-in-chief Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine, who, coincidentally, has been making the rounds on the queer internet lately thanks to his portrayal of a bottom in Red, White & Royal Blue).
But PJ and Josie’s luck — if you can call it that — changes after Josie accidentally bumps Jeff’s knee with her car a few weeks before the big game, catapulting her to the center of the school rumor mill. One half-truth leads to another, and soon, Josie has the entire school convinced that the awkward shoulder sling she’s currently sporting is actually a souvenir from one of the fights that she and PJ survived over the summer… in juvie. PJ, the more outspoken and brash of the pair, takes things a step further by concocting a ridiculous cheerleader seduction plan: Using their newfound fight cred, they start an all-girls fight club under the guise of offering self-defense lessons. All that close-up blood, sweat, and tears has gotta lead to some girl-on-girl action, right?
Well, yes! But how we get there is a wild ride, with violence and campy satire that’s dialed up to eleven. Bottoms pulls no punches — pun very much intended — when it comes to its violence or its punchlines, which drily encompass everything from faux-feminist empowerment to pipe bombs to rape culture. Dealing with the fucked-up realities of existing as a teenage girl through nihilistic ridiculousness somehow feels synonymous with Gen Z culture.
Thankfully, the film’s nondescript Americana setting and heightened self-awareness help it from feeling easily dated. Sure, the characters utter colloquial phrases like “slay” and the viral adage “men need therapy.” But aesthetically, it could really be set at any time. (This is a world where fully uniformed football players show up to class in cages. Do you really expect me to care that some kid has a walkman?)
Managing to shape the unwieldy world of Bottoms into an entertaining, coherent script is an accomplishment in itself; Seligman and Sennott’s artistic meet-cute at NYU is well-known among twentysomething film lovers, and for good reason. The two share a talent for turning the most mundane dilemmas up to a fever pitch, particularly when it comes to messy yet endlessly watchable queers.
Sennott and Edebiri’s history also gives Bottoms a leg-up. If their on-screen friendship has an improvisational, lived-in feel, that’s by design. After all, the duo fine-tuned their comedic chemistry while co-starring in their Comedy Central webseries Ayo and Rachel Are Single. Building off her turns in Shiva Baby and last year’s Bodies Bodies Bodies, Sennott remains gifted at turning characters that should be unbearable into ones you can’t stop watching thanks to her off-the-cuff comedic timing. And while casual moviegoers will likely associate Edebiri with her work in the FX drama The Bear, my main hope is that they walk away with a better appreciation for her confessional, sharp-yet-sweet comedic persona. The entire ensemble cast is a joy, although I’ll reserve a special shout-out for former NFL star Marshawn Lynch as the girls’ checked-out teacher.
By the time that Bottoms reaches its go-for-broke climax, the film has racked up an impressive body count in more ways than one. It certainly won’t be for everyone, but if you’ve ever found yourself longing for a film that jammed the shamelessly goofy horndog antics of teen sex comedies and the surrealism of films like Heathers into a very gay, very bloody package, Bottoms is the film you’ve been waiting for.
Bottoms is in limited theaters August 25, and opens wide September 1.
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