Gay cinema is weird. Why wouldn't it be? Being queer in most societies is a peculiar existence that can flip from being joyful one minute to full of sorrow the next. Tasks or events that are mundane for cis-het people are a matter of life and death for many of us in the LGBTQIA+ community. So many aspects of existing as a queer person are so conceptually absurd that it's no wonder cinematic reflections of this community would also be unorthodox. The likes of John Waters, Jamie Babit, Gregg Araki, Angela Robinson, and so many more have wrung incredibly entertaining cinema out of stories that alternate between wacky, depraved, and just plain weird. Their works perfectly capture the nuance and strangeness of queer existence while also delightfully eschewing the "model citizen" approach many cis-het people believe queer folks need to inhabit to secure "respect" and "acceptance".
Following in this grand tradition is Bottoms, a new sex comedy from Emma Seligman. It's an absurd farce of a movie that revels in the stylized world of High School movies and delivers some amazing horny chaotic lesbian representation.
PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are a pair of High Schoolers who would like to get laid this century. However, the pair keep striking out with any lady that catches their fancy, with Josie being especially enamored with Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). After accidentally hurting star quarterback Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), these long-time best friends conjure up a lie that they're overseeing a "self-defense club" at their High School. PJ is convinced that this scheme is a great way to get closer to hot ladies and finally get some action. The result of this madcap concept is that a lot of ladies begin punching each other regularly (to trait for actual attackers), Isabel and Josie keep finding chances to spend time alone together, and the deranged football players at this school begin getting worried that they're no longer the center of attention.
A few days before seeing Bottoms, I caught up with Strays, that new R-rated comedy about dogs who saw potty words. The most disappointing part of that movie was how rigidly it adhered to sentimentality and standard storytelling conventions. I should not be able to predict every single moment of a movie focused on a dog out for some genital-based revenge. Strays tries to pass itself off as "adult" and "edgy", but it's way too enamored with didactic dialogue about character defects to ever embrace its strange side. That's a problem with too many modern R-rated comedies, which often are too timid to ever get truly weird. That's, thankfully, not a problem with Bottoms, which crams a lot of oddball gags into its concise 88-minute runtime. There's no attempt here to offer up lengthy explanations for why PJ is the way she is nor does every character feel the need to laboriously explain every inexplicable thing that happens on-screen. Writers Seligman and Sennott understand that the bizarre and unexplained is the recipe for great comedy.
Bottoms is hilarious, full stop, and many of its best jokes come from Seligman and cinematographer Maria Rusche executing seriously funny visual gags. Tired of modern comedy movies pushing all their jokes to the foreground and overdosing every scene in bright lighting to adhere to the visual standards of Netflix cinema? Bottoms is the remedy for that, as nearly every scene delights with humorous background gags that encourage viewers to poke around in the corner of the frame. An assortment of darkly humorous posters scattered around the hallways and cafeteria will especially satisfy eagle-eyed comedy fans. There's a larger world going on at this school beyond PJ and Josie, which just makes this feature all the more delightful to watch.
It helps too that the actors assembled here know just how to tap into the unique unhinged vibe of Bottoms, particularly leading ladies Sennot and Edebiri. Having worked together before on multiple occasions, the duo share a familiar rapport that makes the eternal friendship of PJ and Josie incredibly easy to buy. In their standalone performances, Edebiri does remarkable work imbuing such authentic humanity into such a wacky character while Sennott puts the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler to shame in her rendering of a selfish horndog in over their head. That's a standard protagonist archetype for the American comedy movie but rarely has that type of person been realized with such precisely funny line deliveries and perfect body language as Sennott's work in Bottoms.
Of course, the MVP of the cast has to be Marshawn Lynch in a supporting role as Mr. G. Not only are all his lines so sharply written, but Lynch is just a riot playing a guy who says the most incredulous things with total confidence. Mr. G is often in his own little world and Lynch makes that detachment a riot to watch. The incredibly enjoyable nature of Lynch's performance and everyone else in the cast makes it shockingly easy to get invested in all the madcap mayhem of Bottoms. A sequence involving some revenge on Jeff set to a perfect 1980s needle drop is genuinely exhilarating. Meanwhile, a football field finale proves more exciting than many straightforward climaxes from this summer's costlier blockbusters. Best of all, some of the intimate scenes between Isabel and Josie are so tender and sweet. Much like how the "Beautiful Ride" scene in the wacky Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is more moving than anything in any other standard music biopic, so too does Bottoms excel compared to other movies less reliant on lunacy.
On top of all that, Bottoms even becomes the rare modern comedy movie to deliver a memorable score courtesy of Charlie XCX and Leo Birenberg. Their compositions are brash creations that delightfully complement the pronounced nature of the entire production. Though its score, cinematography, and overall direction show a lot more care than usual for a modern American comedy, the trait of Bottoms that truly makes it a must-see is that it's flat-out hysterical. The unabashed weirdness that defines so much of queer cinema serves the creative comedy of Bottoms incredibly well.
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