Well that escalated quickly

Score: 4/5

Going into Bottoms I thought I had a good idea of what I would experience. A Booksmart with a mix of Fight Club, times ten. It’s a wacky idea, I just didn’t realize how quickly and how far on the wacky end this movie would end up being. It felt like writers Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott told each other, “You want over the top? I will show you over the top.” When I let my brain turn off the feeling that there was no way a school would be like this, I had a hilariously fun time.

This movie has a ridiculous silly vibe that I couldn’t get enough of. This comes from a cast of zany hyper-versions of characters and cliques. The story follows Rachel Sennott’s PJ and Ayo Edebiri’s Josie as they stumble into creating a women’s self-defense fight club to get out of “injuring” a star football player. They lean into this as an opportunity to hopefully have sex with girl cheerleaders they have crushes on. What follows is a series of escalating violence and lies which eventually explodes into a video game or comic-style grand finale of blood and explosions. It’s not gorey like a horror movie, but director Emma Seligman doesn’t shy away from going all in on the premise.

The two leads in Sennott and Edebiri do a great job, but I can’t say enough about the cast around them. Ruby Cruz’s Hazel has some wild moments as the brains behind making the fight club work. Nicholas Galitzine’s football star Jeff is super amusing. In fact, the entire football team acts more like drama students than the jocks they actually are. There are so many other fun characters but I have to include Marshawn Lynch’s Mr. G. The teacher who gets convinced to be the club’s faculty advisor. I have only seen him act in Westworld, and you know what? I think I want to see this guy in more comedies. He was always funny whenever he popped up in a scene.

This was a fun movie. Weird? Oh yeah, but it was a weird I could get into. That ending I mentioned? That sealed it for me. This movie is a blast and for anyone who likes that more over-the-top fun high school raunchy movies, you are in for a treat.