Everyone else knows, however, that it’s a bare-knuckled fight club, only without the creepy Tyler Durden baggage. G (a scene-stealing Marshawn Lynch) is told is about self-defense for young girls. Better still, they use it as a pretext to launch an extracurricular club that oblivious teacher Mr. Lonely, horny, and eager to lose their virginity to star cheerleaders Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber)-who, by the by, both have boyfriends-PJ and Josie are thus fine with letting a false rumor spread about them going to juvvie. The two have been friends since the first grade (and only friends), but despite each enjoying a healthy amount of motormouth charisma, they’ve found themselves relegated to the role of desperate wallflowers in a high school transfixed by the football team’s season schedule. This pair of unorthodox suitors are PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri). Together, they plot a subversive attack on coming of age yarns, even as they’ve made a probable cult classic in the form it’s certainly one of the most original with the setup being about two queer girls who think their best shot at dating cheerleaders is to punch them in the face. The brainchild of both Seligman and her frequent leading lady Rachel Sennott, Bottoms sees the Shiva Baby pair reunite, now as co-screenwriters and co-conspirators. In a genre defined by pent-up emotional stresses and triggers, Bottoms lands devastating blows of laughter by being blunt and unafraid to smile through the absurdities of adolescent life-even if that means revealing broken teeth and blood dribbling down the chin along the way. Yet few have made it as literal, or punch-drunk giddy, as Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, the first coming of age flick that revolves around an after-school fight club. Many, in fact, lean into the feeling of it’s you versus the world.
Of course high school movies have been less afraid to speak these truths to their target audiences than parents. The high school experience is more primal than we care to admit: classroom cliques that are barely indistinguishable from warring tribes social and biological pressures to seek a mate which can be as overbearing as acne and the occasional, actual hallway beatdown are all part and parcel with being an American teenager.
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