✯✯✯½

If you’ve ever wondered what a female-led Fight Club-esque movie would look like, the follow-up film to Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby might have something close to what you’d ask for. Every minute of this film feels like it’s aiming for something more incendiary in comparison to most other teen comedies like the films that Seligman is emulating, although with an evident queer twist. That alone might be enough to sell people in on Bottoms, because for the most part, it’s very funny – although maybe not nearly as gutsy as one could hope for.

Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri star as PJ and Josie, a pair of unpopular lesbian best friends who are simply looking for an opportunity to have sex. Tired of being shoved around by all the popular guys at their school, they end up starting a supposed “fight club” disguised as a women’s self-defense club – all with the intention of hooking up with cheerleaders whom they both have crushes on. This soon backfires when the club gets more attention than the two of them can control, and even the star football players of their school take notice. Of course, it’s only fitting that when someone steals the popular girls’ attention away from the popular guys, some sort of new world order is in place.

Bottoms is unabashed in its silliness, which might become the biggest selling point for most viewers. With a screenplay co-written by both Seligman lead star Rachel Sennott, you’d be harder pressed to find something that embraces its silliness when you’re taking the high school setting into consideration, as it’s where all the drama really starts to escalate prior to entering adulthood. But I think that it stands out from most other high school comedies in the veins of films like Mean Girls or Bring It On in that it’s a whole lot meaner than said films. It’s often felt in the film’s sense of humour, which often works, but even in how it gives a voice for queer girls who wanted to feel a sense of prominence in this genre.

The two leads, played by Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, don’t exactly look like high school students – although I think that’s part of what makes the casting particularly ingenuous. As we’d known from many classic high school films by way of John Hughes, the actors playing the teens were all adults who probably look like they’re too old to be there. It also adds to what makes the film’s humour work, because many teens remember their days in high school with so much overplayed drama and of course, it’s all played as over-the-top as you could want it to be. And it helps that the two of them have so much chemistry together, although I find it hard to believe that there’s a universe where the two of them would be considered the “unpopular” and “ugly” girls around. I’m sure that both of them are aware of this, which makes it funny to think about.

With noting the John Hughes influence, it’s also probably where I find that Bottoms struggles with finding its own footing. It’s clear that Emma Seligman has made a film within the same veins as most high school films that we’ve made ourselves become familiar with over the years, although it feels like Bottoms is rather limited in terms of its own structure because it seems to play along with the same conventions as most high school films leading up to the climax. The differences only get so far enough with considering how mean-spirited the whole environment of the film is, but I think there’s only so much one can do with that structure that could easily have led to something all the more playful.

Needle drops aplenty are inescapable in Bottoms, whether they go from Charli XCX (who scored the film alongside Leo Birenberg) to Avril Lavigne (some evidence that this film was directed and co-written by a Canadian) and some obvious hits like Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Many of these drops also feel very inventive with regards to how they’re used for the scenes, even if they feel like the really obvious ones to hit – which perhaps plays into the film’s silliness too.

I can’t always say that this film’s humour works for me the whole way through, because the raunchiness of the film’s concept also feels somewhat tame. Even when you’re considering films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and how they feed into the raunchiness every opportunity that they can, Bottoms does feel like it’s falling quite short. It seems like Seligman pushes for the R-rating with the concept alone, but being neutered in this manner only seems to play it too safely where most popular teen sex comedies have expressed far more freedom to really feel like it’s always as sex-positive as it would like to position itself.

Moving forth from Shiva Baby into a bigger studio project would put lots of pressure on any creator, especially when the expectations have already been set in stone based on that film. Emma Seligman choosing to make something with a clear love for the teen films that she’s loved over the years is one way, but perhaps making it so silly is the best way to go about. There’s obviously a crowd that’s going to love this film for the voices that it stands for. Though I think that something that works on having an entirely outrageous premise could easily have pushed the envelope a little more. What’s laid out nonetheless though, is still fun enough while it lasts.

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Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Amazon MGM Studios.

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Directed by Emma Seligman
Screenplay by Emma Seligman, Rachel Sennott
Produced by Elizabeth Banks, Max Handelman, Alison Small
Starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Dagmara Domińczyk, Marshawn Lynch
Running Time: 91 minutes
Release Date: August 25, 2023