Bottoms - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

Rachel Sennott exploded onto the cinematic scene in 2020 with the hilarious cringe comedy Shiva Baby, even though she’d worked on a few smaller projects before, Shiva Baby was her true big screen debut, also one of the first film reviews I ever wrote and if you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend. Since then her career has went nuclear, she’s one of the freshest faces in Hollywood that you can get in your movie, the combination of her charm and humor makes her a huge draw for films looking to entice the Gen Z crowds. The new movie Bottoms reunites Rachel with her Shiva Baby counterpart Emma Saligman, the incredible eighteen year old writer/director, and together they’re back to take us on a new comedic adventure. The basic premise and tone for the film are quite silly by comparison to the edgier and darker Shiva Baby, Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri are at the bottom of the high school barrel, so they start a high school girls “fight club” to impress the girls they’ve got their eyes on. Despite the silliness, Sennott’s energy is contagious, the humor of the film is top notch, unlike Shiva, Bottoms veers away from the cringy and falls far more into the realm of mainstream goofy, raunchy and sometimes bloody high school fare. In terms of great movies, this film won’t likely be among critics and cinephiles favorites, but in terms of straight comedies this year, Bottoms is easily one of the tops. 

SYNOPSIS - This high school comedy kicks off in Josie’s (Ayo Edebiri) bedroom, one of our main protagonists, but as a rock anthem that sounds a lot like Joan Jett’s I Love Rock And Roll plays down, we begin to hear the voice of the other, PJ (Rachel Sennott). As the camera shows us glimpses of Josie’s room, PJ energetically and spastically speaks about the two girls being ugly for years, but they’re developing and as she blurts out, “We’re finally hot, at least, according to me”, you can’t but help to start cracking a smile, if not laughing out loud. As Josie and PJ are both lesbians, she speaks in rather crude but hilarious terms about tonight being the night they’re both finally getting “in the cooch” and they’re going to talk to their crushes. PJ has the hots for Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Josie likes Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), both cheerleaders for the football team. Josie is the shyer, down to earth, more realistic of the two friends and is less easily convinced that after eleven years, now it’s finally time for things to happen for the pair, especially because her crush, Isabel, has a boyfriend, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), the football team’s quarterback. But the two head off to a back to school county fair where they bump into their friend Hazel (Ruby Cruz), a tomboyish girl that in her naivety, asks if the girls went to a juvenile detention center to which PJ sarcastically responds, “Yeah, we went to juvie.” Before Hazel can get clarification on the statement, the high school football team comes crashing through and Jeff takes the spotlight with some of his dumb jock poses and a crap eating grin plastered on his face.

From across the fair, Isabel and Brittany come over to talk to PJ and Josie and hilarity ensues with plenty of awkward interactions and hotdog-less bun jokes to let the audience know exactly what they’re in for this time around. After leaving the fair though, in the parking lot PJ and Josie nudge Jeff with their vehicle sending the jock tumbling to the ground screaming in agony. The next day at school rumors are swirling as Hazel continues to circulate the ideas that our protagonists went to juvie. So when the film’s ridiculous premise gets injected into the story, that the rival football team’s town tries to randomly attack the townspeople and are orchestrating random acts of violence against them, PJ and Josie decide to start a club. They offer to teach girls to fight and protect themselves from these threats, with their experiences in juvie used as a facade to hopefully get to hang out with and spend time with their crushes. While this sounds like nonsense, and it is quite silly, the premise is mostly fine, considering this isn’t high art here, the fun, sometimes brutal and bloody amusement of it all outweighs any of the ridiculous plot points. By the time the final act rolls around, the big high school football rivalry game showdown is about to take place and the girls have all been bloodied and bruised numerous times, this film has managed to deliver on exactly what all the Rachel Sennott and Shiva Baby enthusiasts were hoping to see.

For starters, the direction from the eighteen year old Emma Saligman is really something special, and while I won’t say she’s some incredible director that’s working on some other level, she clearly has a knack for comedies and I’ll be excited to see what she’s making in another ten years. When it comes to the humor in Bottoms, the film stays consistent throughout it’s runtime which helps keep any lags in the pacing nominal, with the final act being the weakest link in terms of any slowdown an audience might notice. But at just an hour and a half run this film wisely doesn’t allow it’s paper thin plot to wear out it’s welcome, it gets in and gets out quick while providing silly, racy and quite hilarious entertainment as it goes. And while the plot and story progression are quite predictable and uninspired, the writing for the film is impressive, not to the same level as Mean Girls perhaps, but Saligman has provided us with plenty of laugh out loud moments and these characters are enjoyable. I have to imagine some of Sennott’s one liners were improvised and as far as performances go, Rachel absolutely steals the show, and most of the scenes she’s in. Her character, probably a good reflection of herself, is fearless and funny and you always wonder if she’s about to spew out another incredible one liner or stick her foot in her mouth for the fifteenth time in any given scene. The rest of the cast is all serviceable, Ayo Edebiri provides a delightful counterpart playing across from the loud and outspoken Sennott, but nobody else stood out much to me. In the end Bottoms really does work well in a number of aspects and while the older the crowd the more difficult it’ll be to entertain, for the younger generations it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, make us cringe a little and laugh a lot.

SUMMARY - This movie flies by with ease, it’s just a fun time at the movies and was more consistently funny than some other recent comedies like Joy Ride, Champions or a few others, with jokes and one liners aplenty. While the Barbie film still reigns supreme as my favorite comedy of 2023, Saligman, Sennott and company give her a run for her money and will probably have you saying, “Bottoms up.”