Unpopular best friends PJ and Josie start a high school fight club to meet girls and lose their virginity. They soon find themselves in over their heads when the most popular students start beating...
For every heartwarming, down-to-earth, coming of age high school survival movie, there’s a skewered and unhinged fever dream that revels in the archaic transitioning and overstimulation high school puts someone through. “Bottoms” is thoroughly in the latter half of that category and it’s all the better for it….
….most of the time.
This is exactly the quaint setup these types of stories have to what is, essentially, a tried and true John Hughes-like formula; only supposedly coked up on the zealousness of a David Fincher film crossbred with the DNA of Booksmart and Moxie while skinny dipping in the shedded layers of Project X and Mean Girls. Everything about this plot is purposely over-the-top and borders on absurdity but considering most of these teen sex comedies have to pull off a precarious balancing act with being raunchy without knowing what line not to cross, this one’s insistence on brashness, fearlessness and inane chaos helps harbor a sense of pride and personality that others can’t quite pull off. It salivates in being as boisterous as possible without pulling any punches and being gleefully upfront and direct on heightening its own sense of reality rather than paying tribute to what came before; said satirization is very dizzying, tame and extreme at once and it’s meant to feel like a rollercoaster…..where most of the pieces don’t have to make sense to be enjoyed.
It dabbles hard into not just the outlandish renderings of all of its stereotypical characters and the roles they play but the juxtaposition regarding social hierarchies, hegemony, sexual desires, the inane nature of casually normalized violence against women and, in general, just what happens when people demonize or reject women who don’t fit a certain mold. Somehow it teeters between empowerment, sensibility, and sarcasm with no real foot in the door and that…..somehow makes the experience weirdly cathartic.
I think that’s why Emma Seligman’s exaggerated go-for-broke sharp tongue compliments the ridiculousness we see so well. Her approach is somehow both irreverent and quirky, dabbling in both surrealism and absurdism at once seamlessly.
Production design helps to build the high school environment as its own microcosm very akin to how teenagers feel like high school is their entire universe, and Eunice Jera Lee’s costume design certainty leans into that. Of course, the presentation the film is built upon runs high on enthusiasm for all things and it strikes a sweet yet abrasive tone that gels well with whatever physical comedy works. Cinematography boasts a visual aesthetic and saturated color palette that not only makes use of heightened motion but supplies a dreary sense of oppression that meshes well with the concise editing that follows, the musical score actually gets a little better near the end, sound design was fairly solid throughout and despite being a relatively short film, it has SO much life and energy to give, mostly due to the eclectic range of it’s performers and the chemistry they share with one another.
As a result of being so drunk off of its own balls-to-the-walls hysteria, however, it nearly commits the mistake of getting too high off its own supply; it’s meaning is entirely different here than in Scarface but you get what I mean. The film moves at breakneck speeds, so much so that emotional whiplash is a guaranteed certainty whenever they slow down and have the required “emotional beats” and between shifting through lightheartedness and attempted moments of depth, this leads to an inconsistent tone.
Not to mention, it’s just another liar revealed story and it goes along exactly how you’d expect it to, with all the synthetic bells and whistles attached. While it doesn’t kill the pacing, it drags the entirety of the second act down to a crawl, along with other fabled lackluster beats that come with it. Not every comical bit is a slam dunk; I’ve mentioned in the past I’m not a big fan of ramble comedy (although, that’s to be expected), it can’t escape my notice that nobody is entirely likable and the dialogue isn’t that memorable either outside a few decent lines.
That being said, I guess see why some people have been raving on about this; it’s definitely a fun time but it’s nowhere near the laugh-out-loud riot others say it is. I’m just glad I went into it with an open mind.
