If you’re at all familiar with Film Twitter (or X as the app is allegedly called now) or spend a lot of time reading the thoughts of filmmakers and thespians alike, you may have seen the discourse around the “mid-budget comedy.” Earlier this month, Adam Devine, known best for Pitch Perfect and Workaholics, made waves in Hollywood circles when he suggested the ascension of the Marvel Cinematic Universe killed comedy in movies. He also blamed “message comedy,” a genre he ascribes to films like Don’t Look Up, which Devine suggests is akin to a parent sneaking in vegetables in their kids’ meals.
Lucky for Adam, Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott have swooped in to save the day. The two follow up their critically acclaimed and criminally under-seen claustrophobic comedy Shiva Baby with Bottoms, a call back to the zany teen comedies of the early aughts.
The film follows PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri, The Bear), two best friends who kick off their senior year with a singular goal in mind: hook up with cheerleaders. The problem is they are uncool and their crushes, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu, No Exit) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber, Babylon), are straight. After getting in trouble for injuring the school’s star football player (Nicholas Galitzine, Red, White & Royal Blue), the duo decide the best way to avoid expulsion and win over the desire of their crushes is to start a fight club for the female students. If this sounds ridiculous don’t worry, it is!
Bottoms is raunchy, irreverent, and quite frankly violent; it doesn’t pretend to take place in the real world, instead creating its own laws of physics and moral code. It’s also unbelievably funny. Between the jokes you can barely hear over the audience laughter and everything going on in the background of each scene, I probably need 3-4 more viewings. When festival and critic-laden audiences first watched it earlier in the year, many labeled it as the Mean Girls of the current era. This comparison does not begin to capture the movie’s essence. For almost the entire 88 minute run time, I expected some semblance of reality to set it but it never came. Heathers and Not Another Teen Movie are more apt.
Sennott and Edebiri both play characters you can believe. PJ possesses Sennott’s signature sarcasm and Edebiri provides Josie with her uncertain self-deprecation, their chemistry shining through in every scene they have together. Bottoms also has a surprisingly great performance from former NFL champion Marshawn Lynch; he’s essentially playing himself as a teacher in this make believe world.
I can’t help but draw comparisons between this and Barbie, which continues to obliterate box office records. Both films are filled with quick-witted humor, both attempt to tackle themes of feminism and womanhood, both are set in fantastical worlds, and both end in a huge fight scene. The difference is Greta Gerwig set out to make an earnest movie that comes to a head with a lesson. Seligman, on the other hand, had no such intentions — nothing makes sense and there is no grand moral lecturing. While my personal taste leans slightly towards Gerwig’s style, that’s my own biases at play.
A major criticism of Barbie is that America Ferrera’s speech screams “this is deep and important,” while actually not being all that profound. It’s Devine’s “message comedy” at its finest. The first time I saw it I agreed; I think I even rolled my eyes a little. But on the second viewing, it annoyed me less. Sometimes the simple and obvious are okay. But that’s not to say I can’t appreciate a movie that is silly just for silly’s sake. Not everything needs to “mean something.” Some movies just are what they are, and Bottoms is one of them. So my 3.5 star rating is in no way an indictment of what Seligman and Sennott accomplished here. On the contrary, it’s the ultimate compliment for the film they made: the quintessential mid-budget comedy.
Am I underrating Bottoms or am I giving it too much credit?