Lesbians? Check. High School? Check. Fight Club? Check. Emma Seligman’s Bottoms brings all three together in this raunchy R-rated teen rom-com starring Ayo Edebiri, Rachel Sennott, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Ruby Cruz, and Nicholas Galitzine. Opening in only ten theater companies across the United States, Bottoms grossed $461,052 in its opening weekend, with widespread online despair that it wasn’t available in more locations. Everyone’s prayers were answered within a month after its August 25th release: Bottoms began playing in over 700 theaters (including Rutgers Cinema!), and had grossed over $10 million.
Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott respectively play Josie and PJ, two best friends in high school who deem themselves “gay, untalented, and ugly.” Seriously, PJ says that about them. Their goal for the year is to get with the cheerleaders they’ve known for years, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber), and they unsuccessfully flirt with them at a carnival. And then they drive into Isabel’s boyfriend’s knees when Isabel gets into Josie’s car for a safety ride. Her boyfriend Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) is the overdramatic star football player of the school, and he theatrically faints from being tapped on the knees by Josie’s car.
Here, the movie taps into a sort of fourth wall break, with Jeff’s best friend Tim (Miles Fowler) yelling up at the screen, “They won’t get away with this!” Bottoms continues to utilize these sort of campy antics throughout the movie. Josie and PJ’s friend Hazel (Ruby Cruz) asks them if they went to juvie over the summer, following their being called out by the school principal for injuring Jeff. Ever the sarcastic character, PJ decides to say that they did go to juvie— and in the principal’s office, she says that they were practicing for their “girls fight club” to “empower women”.
A montage of the progression of their fight club ensues, showing the girls learning to fight, bonding with each other, and PJ and Josie becoming more popular. Both of them even keep up the ruse of having been to juvie. The movie features multiple montages with quality ballads, including “PAIN” by King Princess, “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, and “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler. The rest of the movie’s soundtrack was recorded by Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg.
To avoid any further spoilers, so that you can go watch the movie yourself, other highlights include PJ saying “Yeah Hazel, let’s do terrorism,” Karolina (Dagmara Domińczyk) from HBO’s Succession, and a very, very aggressive football game. The third act of Bottoms really does hit like one of the punches that they were throwing in the fight club. Each actor has excellent comedic timing, and Seligman knocks it out of the park when it comes to satirizing the unrealistic high school setting that teen movies always have. (Where was the marching band at this football game? The school seems rich enough to have a marching band.)
From football players and cheerleaders always wearing their uniforms, to a gay theater kid, to a distinct lack of most of the characters’ parents, the NYU alums producing this movie knew exactly what they were doing. They brought back bloopers at the end of the movie!
In terms of the movie’s critical acclaim, Bottoms received a 93% on the Tomatometer, an 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 7/10 on IMDB. The target audience of this movie also commonly uses Letterboxd to rate the films they watch, with Ayo Edebiri herself giving it five stars with the caption, “I’m in it with my friends so”. It currently has a 4.1 out of 5 star rating on the website, with absolute reviews like “the fight scene at the end is better than any fight scene in any superhero or action movie ever” from user Zoe and “All other comedy movies should just give up cause you’re not gonna TOP this” from user 24framesofnick. One of my own personal reviews was “if Jennifer’s Body was set in the universe of But I’m a Cheerleader, made by NYU alums.” I’ve seen the movie three times already.
Bottoms is already available to buy on sites like Amazon Prime and Youtube for $14.99. It can also be watched through endless parts on the TikTok For You Page, because that’s one way to watch media these days. This of course puts the current Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes back into the spotlight. (As of September 27th, 2023, the WGA strike has ended. The SAG strike is ongoing.) The rapid streaming releases take time away from a movie being in theaters, and from the amount of money that the writers and actors will make. Streaming does not bring in the same residuals for the creators of a movie – streaming brings in money for the studios and streaming networks. They want to avoid paying their creatives, so they force audiences to resort to the small screen.
Regardless, the impact of Bottoms is still undeniable. In a culture where lesbian media is often overlooked, or about tragic women in the 1900s, Bottoms creates a space for them to be ridiculous and silly. The release of Red, White, and Royal Blue, an adaptation of the gay story by Casey McQuiston, also featuring Nicholas Galitzine, made parts of the audience nervous that he would gain more attention from the fanbase. Despite that, the majority of the audience focused on the performances by the women – Edebiri, Sennott, Liu, Gerber, and Cruz. Even more than that, Bottoms features an interracial couple that doesn’t include a white person, incorporating representation in the most subtle ways.
This does in fact include representation for the homoerotic nature of football as a game (“The epic highs and lows of high school football,” from Riverdale, anyone?). It brings back bright and outrageous comedy in a time where dark and gritty films were the norm, letting people laugh out loud in theatres. Alongside Barbie, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE tour, and TikTok’s love for phrases like “girl dinner” and “girl math,” Bottoms follows through on what was called “the summer of girls.” It is a hilarious love letter to young adulthood, and worth a watch for anyone who wants to escape the real world for 92 minutes.