This past week’s release of “Bottoms” might have been one of the best features to hit theaters all year. Directed by Emma Seligman and co-written by Rachel Sennott (who also stars as one of the leading roles in the comedy), the film revived the unfortunately dying genre of good high school satires. After the release of “Booksmart” in 2019, arguably one of the last really good films that encapsulates high school in a witty, comedic light, high school comedy flicks released in the past few years have been missing the mark in a variety of ways. They end up either too corny or cringy, and overall just take themselves way too seriously. “Bottoms” does exactly the opposite. It satirically depicts the pinnacle of American high school culture (sexism, misogyny, etc.), while hitting all the classic points you’d see in something like “Not Another Teen Movie,” a parodical comedy from 2001.
The film follows two queer best friends, PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), who are striving to lose their virginities before finishing up their senior year of high school. The way in which they go about reaching that goal is teaming up with fellow school lesbian-outcast, Hazel (Ruby Cruz), to make an all-girls “fight club.” PJ and Josie have plans to use the club as a front to gain the attraction of their straight-presenting crushes on the cheerleading squad, PJ with Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Josie with Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) who, unfortunately, is taken by the school quarterback. Hazel, on the other hand, was simply excited for the club to be a safe space for girls at the school to learn how to defend themselves, while also making new friends along the way. Surprisingly, the girls in school do appreciate the idea of learning how to protect themselves, and thus they begin their weekly meetings by throwing hilarious punch after punch at each other.
Alongside a band of outcasts, another thing you can’t miss in the making of a high school classic is a football team full of jocks, and “Bottoms” has just that. One of my personal favorite scenes in the movie was when the quarterback, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), runs out into the football field in an enthusiastic trance of school spirit, turning around to reveal the name on the back of his jersey is, simply, “Jeff.” And of course the quarterback always needs his sidekick and this is no exception. Jeff’s best friend and teammate, Tim (Miles Fowler), spends his screen time in the film doing absolutely everything in his power to stop PJ and Josie’s club of women empowerment.
One of the film’s biggest takeaways for me was that being gay was not the central root of conflict in this movie like it is for a lot of other queer films. PJ and Josie weren’t disliked and outcasts because they’re gay; it’s because they’re weird, and they definitely are weird. In a scene getting ready for their town’s fair, PJ overtly refers to them both as being unliked because they are “ugly and untalented” but not because they’re lesbians. While there is a multitude of importance in representing the difficulty of the queer experience in high school, a lot of what makes “Bottoms” work was the fact that it didn’t try to retell another story of high school homophobia, or follow a discovery storyline. The main characters know they’re queer from the beginning, and the telling of their queer experience didn’t come to a halt with a coming out story. However, this does not mean the impact of films that do follow the commonly used “gay discovery” storyline is lessened. It is only creating more variety in this genre, and increasing representation for a wider repertoire of stories in movies.
