The Reel Review
Two unpopular queer teenagers decide to start a girls’ fight club in an effort to hook up with their high school’s two hot cheerleaders. But they soon find themselves in over their heads when members start bonding with one another as friends in the spirit of female empowerment. Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri star in this screwball comedy.
Bottoms is what you get when you toss better comedies as Booksmart, Bring It On, Blockers and Mean Girls into a blender. It has chunks of excellence, but still tastes a bit weird. Sennott (The Idol, Bodies Bodies Bodies), who co-wrote the screenplay with her Shiva Baby director Emma Seligman, and Edebiri (The Bear) do, however, keep the laughs flowing as the misfit duo. The fun supporting cast includes Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White & Royal Blue) as Jeff, the narcissistic, nitwit football quarterback, Ruby Cruz (Mare of Easttown) as Hazel, the fighter wanting to “do terrorism,” and a scene stealing Marshawn Lynch as the unlikely fight club’s equally unlikely faculty sponsor, Mr. G.
When the comedy leans into its hilariously bonkers and subversive premise, quippy dialogue, and poking fun at the homoeroticism of football, Bottoms is at its crude, original best. When it shoehorns in a tired lesson about the consequences of deception in the third act, it becomes predictable and stale. Not every joke lands, but there still are enough belly laughs to make the gleefully silly Bottoms worth seeing, as long as you check your brain at the door.
REEL FACTS
• Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri were college roommates at NYU.
• Former pro football player Marshawn Lynch improvised most of his dialogue in the film.
• Model/actress Kaia Gerber who plays cheerleader Brittany in Bottoms, is the daughter of supermodel Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber.
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