150 Word Review: 'Bottoms' (2023)
🎶 But I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo... 🎶
Bottoms is about teenage dirtbags, specifically PJ and Josie, two queer high school losers who come up with a dirtbag plan to hook up with hot girls. Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott play our anti-heroes, awkward and insecure and driven mad by sexual frustration. Oh, the plan? Start an all-girl after-school self-defense "fight club" where they both spin outrageous lies about their combat bona fides. The ploy works a little too well. Cheerleader rage is uncorked, as is horniness.
Sennott, who directs and co-wrote the screenplay, yearns for the liberating recklessness of 1989's Heathers, The Godfather of dark teen comedies. As a comedic duo, Edebiri and Sennott are having fun, even when the audience might not be. Sometimes, the movie drags. Sometimes, the offensive jokes range from "brutal" to "trying too hard." But Bottoms is also sometimes charming, a raunchy slapstick sketch about friendship and the reality-warping power of hormones.