I wanted to watch this again as soon as the credits (which were intercut with bloopers, I might add) ended. For 92-minutes writer/director Emma Seligman's (
Shiva Baby) sophomore effort maintains a level of energy and intensity that shouldn't be overlooked. It's easy for movies to come out of the gate strong, it's admittedly difficult for movies to stick the landing, but one of the most overlooked and undervalued skills in filmmaking as a beginning to end process is maintaining the tone and energy you come out of the gate with through to the end and
Bottoms comes out of the gate strong. Fortunately, Seligman and star Rachel Sennott's screenplay seemingly accomplishes everything it sets out to do, but more importantly it excels in doing so. The way in which the dialogue feels so natural, the rate at which the jokes land, and the simple creativity involved in crafting and conveying this hyper-realized version of high school where no one is subtle about or offended by which clique they belong to or where they land in the pecking order is simultaneously so impressive and so wildly funny that those aforementioned 92-minutes feel like nothing, a tease, which means all you can and want to do when the film ends is to watch it again immediately.
Bottoms is a film as easy to appreciate as it is to be entertained by. It's not hard to spot all the ways in which Seligman and Sennott wanted to put their own stamp on the genre. This is still very much a high school movie in the vein of two best friends trying to get laid their senior year before leaving for college, but with the gender swap bit being only the first layer in their scheme to recontextualize this quest we've witnessed so many times before. Sennott and breakout star Ayo Edebiri are best friends PJ and Josie who are also both lesbians but are not involved with one another romantically. Josie is crushing on head cheerleader Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) who is currently dating the alpha male of the school in Josh (Nicholas Galitzine) while PJ would love to hook up with Isabel's right hand gal Brittany (Kaia Gerber) because she may as well be Cindy Crawford ;). Sounds simple enough, right? It is. Don't fret. Thematically we're not going for much more than some simple, universal truths about how tough it can be in those coming-of-age years, but it is in the attitude and style of how it presents itself that Bottoms really stands on its own.
