Bottoms Overview: Rachel Sennott’s Excessive College Combat Membership Comedy Is a Winner

Seligman and Sennott’s first collaboration was basically a chamber piece, largely happening at a memorial service throughout a single afternoon. Extra acutely, that 2020 image was grounded in a grueling verisimilitude whereby the comedy was derived from cringing at Sennott’s disorganized school child on probably the most awkward day of her life. In contrast, Bottoms demurs from actuality, as a substitute favoring a high-concept the place a gaggle of 17-year-olds share fisticuffs and bomb-making schematics with an easygoing devil-may-care perspective. At occasions the impact might be outright cartoonish and, certainly, the anarchic glee of the storytelling shares greater than a bit with Looney Tunes.

Nonetheless, the strongest inspiration on Bottoms seems to be Daniel Waters’ screenplay for Heathers (1988), one other deeply satirical teen comedy that wallowed in what others would possibly deem dangerous style (Bottoms even features a few passing jabs on the menacing Goth loner with far an excessive amount of ennui as he furiously attracts in his sketchbook). Bottoms likewise pulls from a whole anachronistic spectrum of ‘80s iconography with its depiction of a highschool so obsessive about its soccer staff that every one the gamers put on their jerseys and kit into each class, and the varsity’s star quarterback, merely “Jeff” (Nicholas Galitzine), is afforded his personal PSA bulletins.

The movie is thus set in an anachronistic Neverland the place college students additionally use early-2000s flip telephones and telephone book, and PJ’s costume apparel is a cross between an episode of Full Home and Woman Fowl. The method deliberately courts camp, creating simply sufficient whimsy to help you snort when Edebiri affords Sennott a proper hook throughout the face, or the cheerleaders’ concept of a pep rally routine includes pouring cups of water onto one among their teammates’ shirts.

In such a convivial setting, there isn’t any line or semblance of actuality Seligman received’t cross for a gag. And there are few funnier than every time Edebiri goes on one other virtuoso rant of teenage insecurity, the perfect of which includes Josie resigning herself to the life-style of a friendless lesbian who’ll must marry a closeted evangelical pastor to be able to feign happiness. Critically, Edebiri is an actual discovery, usually seeming to improvise a frenzied joie de vivre as a stressed bundle of nerves so tightly wound she’ll persuade you that she’s oblivious to her honor roll ranges of charisma. She and Sennott additionally pair properly in a buddy routine that fires on the ratatattat tempo of a screwball comedy.

There’ll undoubtedly be comparisons made between their two-hander chemistry and Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, which additionally premiered at SXSW and featured a queer protagonist. This may be a disservice to each movies, nevertheless. Whereas every see teenagers determined to lose their V-cards earlier than commencement, Booksmart was a conventional, raunchy highschool laugher within the Superbad mildew with a distinctly female and Gen-Z point-of-view. Conversely, Bottoms is far more intensely conscious of the singularity of the queer adolescent expertise, and on this approach Bottoms is extra timeless.

Here’s a movie much less involved with snapshotting the youth expertise of 2023 than it’s in laughing about an everlasting one for people who’re remoted by emotions of attraction, alienation, and generally simply old style thirsting. Bottoms explores that with a lusty cheerfulness and a way of kitsch about as delicate as a dropkick to the face. There are, in actual fact, many dropkicks to the face, in addition to the abdomen, the again of the pinnacle, and possibly a kidney or two. At one level the choreography even throws in a sword.