Bot­toms – first-look review

In a world that seems to be mov­ing back­wards fast, it feels good when a movie acknowl­edges the gen­er­al horni­ness of human nature. Sex is a nor­mal, instinc­tu­al act and one that should come with very lit­tle shame, despite the over­whelm­ing­ly neg­a­tive atten­tion it has been receiv­ing over the past few years.

There used to be a time in movies, not too long ago, when sex come­dies were not only com­plete­ly nor­mal, they were cel­e­brat­ed and beloved by any­one and every­one who likes to laugh. They were a poignant mir­ror into the hilar­i­ty of con­nec­tion and the sparks that can fly when things align just right. If you find your­self lament­ing this loss, look no fur­ther than Bot­toms, the lat­est star vehi­cle for dynam­ic duo Ayo Edibiri and Rachel Sen­nott, sure to rev­o­lu­tion­ize the sub­genre and shows the world has changed in a lot of ways, most of them for the better.

Emma Seligman’s sec­ond fea­ture film fol­lows two deeply unpop­u­lar and very gay high school BFFs Josie (Ede­biri) and PJ (Sen­nott), who are head­ing into their senior year deter­mined – like many high school sex com­e­dy vets before them – to lose their vir­gin­i­ty before grad­u­a­tion. After a rival high school foot­ball team is caught assault­ing weak stu­dents from their school ahead of a mon­u­men­tal head-to-head game, the girls hatch a plan to start a fight club to get a chance with a pair of cheer­lead­ers they’re crush­ing on. Nat­u­ral­ly, chaos ensues.

Edibiri and Sen­nott are a comedic dream team, and their pre­vi­ous years of work­ing togeth­er have cul­ti­vat­ed a con­nec­tion that is pal­pa­ble on screen. The friend­ship their char­ac­ters share is so believ­able, there’s almost no chance you didn’t know a pair of friends like them in high school. This film also has the moth­er­load of sup­port­ing play­ers, all of which give every­thing they’ve got. This makes for a very rich and unique set of char­ac­ters that can both func­tion as great joke setups, as well as cru­cial and emo­tion­al­ly dri­ven vehi­cles that move the plot forward.

There’s no deny­ing the film is blis­ter­ing­ly fun­ny, thanks to the script Selig­man told the SXSW audi­ence she and Sen­nott start­ed writ­ing six years ago, which leans into a lot of high school tropes while tak­ing into account how teens of today real­ly speak, react, and think. The com­e­dy feels specif­i­cal­ly cur­rent while being so palat­able for those out­side of Gen Z. A lot of the jokes rely on tone from the actor, which helps their uni­ver­sal­i­ty, but over­all, you don’t have to be part of any par­tic­u­lar gen­er­a­tion to find the com­e­dy of the film to be effec­tive. The laugh­ter is quite sim­ply infectious.

The film also has a dark tinge, and fea­tures its fair share of bloody vio­lence, which is an excel­lent mechan­ic through which to push the end­ing into raunchi­er ter­ri­to­ry, while also serv­ing as a source of empow­er­ment, not just bru­tal­i­ty, for audi­ence and char­ac­ter alike. The final act mon­tage is a par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive set piece that brings utter delight and sat­is­fac­tion to view­ers, while also show­ing off some real­ly smart fight chore­og­ra­phy that gives all the girls their time in the spotlight.

We have a sexy com­e­dy canon at this point, and it needs more queer sto­ries. This is def­i­nite­ly going to be the first of many new and ambi­tious­ly spe­cial projects that high­light the gay, les­bian, or bisex­u­al high school expe­ri­ence. Not to say films like that don’t already exist, but it’s clear Bot­toms will ush­er in a new era of these works.