Sex, eating disorders, homophobia, sexism, and fight clubs. These are just some of things to look forward to when watching Bottoms. Now, someone might pause and say all that is too inappropriate in this day and age of teenage media, but director/writer Emma Seligman and co-writer Rachel Sennott‘s collaboration is precisely what the doctor ordered for not only Gen-X, but also those people who remember when teen comedies were allowed to be inappropriate.
In true, classic teen-movie fashion, Bottoms has twentysomethings playing adolescents. Sennott and Ayo Edebiri are clearly not in high school anymore, but life experience makes them equipped to handle this bracing comedy. Yes, comedy, not a dramedy despite its dramatic (and transparently satirical) blips. This movie is, refreshingly, all about the awkward laughter that helped so many people cope with their formative trials and tragedies.
Sennott’s PJ and Edebiri’s Josie are two social outliers at their school, and as the new semester starts up, so does their sex drives. Both characters are hot and bothered by their classmates, respectively Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), and they think starting a women’s self-defense club at school will help them achieve their horny dreams. This glorified fight club quickly catches on, and the lionized football team is not happy about having to share the spotlight before the upcoming big game. A gender battle then gradually ensues.
Bottoms works not because it’s consistently funny — however, you will laugh a lot when it counts — but because the script and actors don’t take everything too seriously. After receiving a proper kick in the ass after a choppy first act, the movie hurdles toward utterly blissful silliness. From PJ and Josie pretending they barely escaped the Hunger Games equivalent of juvie sentences to Gerber’s character quietly stealing scenes with her perfectly tailored one-liners, Seligman and Sennott craft a pitch-perfect comedy for those who crave boisterous and off-color humor. And that crudeness — such as PJ unhesitatingly calling a room of her female peers straight-up “ugly” and the number of aggressively sexual come-ons — is like a fresh wind in this current climate of dry and safe teen-movies.
Somewhere in the last ten or so years, teens acting irreverent and raunchy on screen became passé. Pubescents now instead act like the cast of Dawson’s Creek but even more astute and histrionic. Being “older than one’s years” is practically mandatory when navigating the youth of characters these days. Here, though, Bottoms eventually lands on top by staying immature, fatuous, and allergic to prudery. There’s a simplicity about Bottoms that other filmmakers and studios would be wise to learn from (although encouraged to not imitate).
Bottoms is ludicrous but also well written. Does it pull at heartstrings, offer proper role models, or mete out life lessons? No, thankfully. It’s just coarse entertainment from a team of people who obviously know the ins and outs of less delicate adolescence. Women are allowed to be dirtbags, sexuality is fluid without being pandering and instructive, and life here is preposterous while still remaining engaging. These characters are a mess, yet their messiness is a triumph for contemporary teen cinema.
Tales from the Paulside 
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