The best thing about Emma Seligman’s 2020 film Shiva Baby is the intimate connection between director and lead actor. Rachel Sennott’s Danielle is a college senior facing adult life by making a bunch of questionable choices, like the secret sugar daddy whom she uses for financial support instead of getting a job. Shiva Baby is one of those rare films that earns the “dramedy” moniker. Yes, it’s an extraordinarily well-done cringe comedy, but you actually end up caring about what happens to these (admittedly obnoxious) people.
Seligman and Sennott re-teamed for Bottoms, a completely different kind of comedy that hints at a deep well of potential for this duo. This time, Sennott stars as PJ, a would-be Ferris Bueller at Rockbridge Falls High School. The problem, as she and her best friend Josie (Ayo Edebiri) express it, is that they’re not the talented, charming kind of gay kids, but rather the sarcastic and abrasive kind. Sure, the Gen Z high schoolers are not nearly as uptight about sexual orientation as they were when John Hughes was making his teenage dramedies, but that doesn’t help PJ or Josie get laid. Nor does it help that they set their sights impossibly high. No matter what gender they are, losers of PJ and Josie’s caliber have no shot with the pair of cheerleaders as radiantly perfect as Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber). Josie’s plan is to patiently wait until their 20th high school reunion and hope Isabel has been ground down enough by life to settle for her.
PJ convinces her that the long game is not viable, so they go to the school’s opening weekend carnival determined to shoot their shot. It’s an unmitigated, but incredibly funny, disaster. Josie’s opening lines include “I like all the holes in your pants” and “Oh look, you’re skinny, too!”
As they’re leaving in humiliated defeat, they witness a parking lot fight between Isabel and her quarterback boyfriend Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine). When they offer Isabel a safe ride home, Jeff tries to stop them from driving away, and flops at the slightest contact between the bumper and his precious QB knee. His teammates (who always dress in full football pads and uniform) rush to his aid. The approaching homecoming game against arch rival school Huntington High means this delicate flower must be protected at all cost. As rumors spread that PJ and Josie spent the summer in juvie, they are called into the principal’s office (Wayne Péré, deliciously slimy). Frantically BS-ing to keep from getting expelled, Josie claims their altercation with Jeff was part of a women’s self-defense club. As their infamy spreads, PJ sees an opportunity. They’ll start a fight club, get the cheerleaders involved, then, hopefully, nature will take its course.
It is, of course, a terrible plan, but that doesn’t stop their burly coach-turned-social studies teacher Mr. G (NFL legend Marshawn Lynch) from signing on as faculty sponsor. PJ’s attempt to become high school Tyler Durden are hilariously pathetic — and made even more hilarious by the fact that they actually work in attracting not only their fellow losers like Hazel (Ruby Cruz), but also Isabel and Brittany.
Sennott and Edebiri are on fire in Bottoms. Josie is the mistress of the rapid, spiraling meltdown. Sennott slowly reveals the desperation lurking below the surface of PJ’s cynical bravado. Fight Club, David Fincher’s classic of male fin de siècle ennui, has long been ripe for a good skewering. Seligman and Sennott gleefully subvert Brad Pitt’s famous speech to the new recruits; the first rule of this fight club is “be punctual.” But the camaraderie of violence works just the same for awkward high school girls as it does for disaffected office workers. As PJ and Josie get lost in “body contact exercises” with the cheerleaders, the group drifts into low-level terrorism. In true Heathers fashion, the adults are so clueless and self-involved that they paper over every new, absurd event.
Seligman’s direction is razor-sharp. Even as she’s hanging Fincher’s pretensions out to dry, she learns from his strengths. There’s no lazy, flat comedy lighting here, and her image composition belie a Kubrickian precision. She honed her lead duo to perfection but didn’t neglect her supporting characters — who knew Marshawn Lynch had such great comic timing? Bottoms is the best high school comedy since Booksmart, and, for my money, an instant classic.
Bottoms
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