'Bottoms' is a f***ed-up cocktail of violence, queer comedy, and feminism

At Rockbridge Falls, unpopular and gay students PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edibiri) come up with an ingenious way of convincing cheerleaders Isabel and Brittany (Havana Rose Liu and Kaia Gerber) to have sex with them - start a self-defence club that's actually a fight club for women...

Much of 'Bottoms' feels like it's being improvised and changed on the fly to suit whatever's happening in the scene. The results are frequently chaotic, funny, but when viewed in terms of the entire story, the whole thing lacks cohesion. Of course, it's not really that important. 'Bottoms' is a movie that exists on chaos, with plans coming up on the fly, and kitchen sink reality is a distant memory. Much like 'Heathers', there's a cynical and biting satirical edge to 'Bottoms' that means it's designed to piss off large swathes of the population but enliven the remainder.

That it does proudly, with its full chest, and without the slightest worry for alienating large parts of the potential audience makes 'Bottoms' a joy to watch. Ayo Edibiri and Rachel Sennott set themselves up early on as a pair of hapless, horny losers out to score some cheerleaders and without the necessary charisma to do so. If this sounds like countless teenage sex comedies, that's kind of the point. 'Bottoms' exists in the world of John Hughes Americana, of cheerleaders and Dutch Colonial homes. The difference is that Ayo Edibiri and Rachel Sennot's characters - both of whom are gay, horny, and not afraid to talk about either of these points - are now in it.

Emma Seligman's buzzy comedy from 2020, 'Shiva Baby', demonstrated her unique ability to blend abrasive personalities with often bittersweet moments without sacrificing the story's integrity or its central themes. Here in 'Bottoms', there's the same blend of disparate elements, but it's also run through with an awareness of the fucked-up nature of teen sex comedies thus far. At 91 minutes, 'Bottoms' manages to squeeze in just about everything it can possibly think of, from token feminism and queer liberation to jokes about David Fincher's 'Fight Club' as well as scene-stealing performances from Marshawn Lynch and Nicholas Galitzine.

'Bottoms' isn't for everybody, but it's adamantly not trying to be for everybody. Yet for those who get it, it's brilliant. The comedy itself is often haywire in nature, ricocheting between absurd and knowing to slapstick in a single scene before it's off to the next setup without a moment to let anything breathe or marinate. Again, that kind of improv-centric comedy works for 'Bottoms' because it's a movie riding the thinnest logline and using it as a way to slip in all sorts of subversive commentary underneath.