Film review: ‘BOTTOMS’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

The suspiciously named Bottoms is a gleefully silly, occasionally witty and slightly subversive teen comedy in the tradition of Heathers and Booksmart with a touch of Fight Club.  The film throws feminist and queer politics into the mix but is mainly a quirky and acerbic comedy.

Friends PJ (Rachel Sennot who cowrote) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri, The Bear) are desperate for some sort of sexual encounter with girls at their high school.  PJ hopes to hook up with the stereotypical alpha queen cheerleader Brittany (Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford) and Josie with the sophisticated Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). Hoping to lure females into physical contact, the two start a women’s self-defence club and to juice up their credentials, spread the rumour that they’re badasses who fought death matches in juvenile detention.  The fact that people automatically believe them should be some indication of the off-kilter world in which this film operates.  Despite the two having almost no self-defence training, they start to forge an empowering environment and solidarity among the school’s female outcasts and popular girls like Brittany and Isabel.  Incensed that the club is taking attention away from them, the extremely temperamental members of the all-important male football team set about sabotaging the club and in the process threaten the friendships that have grown there.

The film mostly consists of acerbic banter between Josie and PJ as they point out their personal shortcomings and the ludicrousness of the alpha male-run high school environment.

The film walks a slightly tricky tightrope between perceptive social satire and complete absurdity in which teachers read porno mags in class and people kill each other without consequence.  It’s a little dark at times but it’s mostly good natured.

Sennot and Edebiri make a strong comic pairing as the snarky PJ and the more chilled and likeable Josie respectively.  Most of the supporting characters make an impression, including Ruby Cruz as put upon friend Hazel and former gridiron player Marshawn Lynch as the highly irresponsible teacher Mr G.

While the film bubbles away with an appealing energy throughout, it’s not quite as funny as it might have been.  It’s wryly amusing and observant most of the time but there are only a couple of big laughs.

Still, with its mix of spiky attitude and affection, this is the sort of film likely to become a future cult favourite.

Nick’s rating: ***

Genre: Comedy.

Classification: MA15+.

Director(s): Emma Seligman.

Release date: 30th Nov 2023.

Running time: 92 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

 

Related Posts:

tagged with , , , ,