First impressions of (there's no way around this...) Bottoms

Bottoms is a movie that might reopen wounds for fans of the Seattle Seahawks.

The dynamite new comedy team of Emma Seligman (director and writer of Bottoms) and Rachel Sennott (co-writer and star)—whose first collaborative feature Shiva Baby was one of 2021’s most celebrated indie films—knew what they were doing when they drafted former Seahawk running back Marshawn Lynch to their team for his first big-screen role. In these 92 minutes, they go to him over and over again, showing better judgment than the Seahawks did with the Super Bowl on the line. And he delivers.

And that’s just one of the best reasons to see Bottoms.

Lynch plays Mr. G, a high school social studies teacher who shows no qualifications whatsoever. His class unit on feminism, for example, suggests he hasn’t even bothered to Google the subject, and he’s likely to turn an elementary introduction into a complete dismissal if the free-thinking young women of his class step on his toes.

But this isn’t a movie about Mr. G. It’s about two of those free-thinking young women: PJ (Sennott) and Josie (the ubiquitous and delightful Ayo Edibiri). Branded as the “ugly and untalented gays” of Rockbridge High, PJ and Josie are cooking up a scheme to lose their virginity before graduation.

Their plan is simple: Exploit the fears and vulnerabilities of their peers. They’ll host an all-female fight club after school to train girls in self-defense before the annual football-game clash with the notoriously predatory jocks of their rival school, Huntington High. Apparently, these Rockbridge/Huntington clashes on the football field always inspire further violence off of the field: assault, rape, even murder. But PJ and Josie aren’t actually qualified to train anybody in anything. So, to fake their credentials, they spread a fake story about having done hard time in juvenile detention.

Will this wild story spark their dreamgirls’ curiosity and eventually make sexual conquests possible? Will Mr. G give them the support they need to get the club up and running? Will they have the guts to throw actual punches? Or will they be exposed as the horny and desperate liars that they are?

Okay, I admit: The Teen Sex Comedy is not a genre I give much attention to. And there are a lot of legendary entries in that genre I’ve never seen, including Wet Hot American Summer and Superbad—both films that are mentioned in almost every review of Bottoms. So, this is not subject matter anybody is likely to seek out my perspective on. Why bother writing about it then? I’m writing because that’s the best way I know to process what I experience. I bought a ticket to Bottoms because some of my students were raving about it. And what do you know—the movie gave me a lot to think about.

Before I go into greater detail about why I laughed all the way through this marathon of bold and dirty jokes, I need to preface my praise with a remembrance of Michael Lehmann’s unconventionally crass high-school satire Heathers. The two films have a lot in common, and in the 35 years I’ve had to suspiciously interrogate myself about my affection for Heathers, I’ve realized some things that helped me recognize right away why this brazenly R-rated comedy was making me cringe, laugh, applaud, and struggle.