Imagine if you took the 80s, 90s, and all of the 2000s until this very second and turned them into a film — you get Bottoms, a glorious queer mash-up, slash parody of a high school romcom.
Barbie was the 2nd best feminist comedy I saw this year. Seriously, the top spot goes to Bottoms.
Emma Seligman takes the high school movie trope and sends it through the blender of her own twisted brain so expertly that at times I couldn’t help but wonder if I was giddy or just high on GHB when I watched it.
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It reminded me of early Wes Anderson. Bottle Rocket early, which in this humble opinion is still one of Wes Anderson’s finest films. Seligman has just as much aesthetic flexibility and silliness in her framing and camerawork, and a writing style that is gloriously sadistic, the kind that rewards someone who is in on the joke over and over again.
I loved the acting, and in particular the teacher role played by Marshawn Lynch—
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whose name I recognized in the credits and vaguely remembered from my football watching days.
If this guy has been in other stuff, I’m officially late to the party because he is a genius comic actor with whip smart timing and the teacher he plays in this film is such a hilarious character that every time he opened his mouth I knew I was going to be spewing with laughter.
I did so much of that in this film. I couldn’t turn the giggles off even if I tried, and wondered self-consciously if the couple next to me was getting annoyed by my chuckles. The dude was getting a little too into my leg space but I was able to cope and stay focused to the end, though they left the theater as soon the movie finished, like before the credits even started to roll, and that wasn’t great for my abandonment issues.
Ms. Seligman’s first film Shiva Baby was kind of a critical darling as well, and though I enjoyed it, I see a far more realized filmmakeress behind the camera in Bottoms than I did in Shiva Baby.
Besides Marshawn Lynch, every role in this film was cast and directed to a sublime key. All of the football players were hilarious, the PR woman from Succession as the rich lady who fucks the star quarterback, totally on the mark, and for all the readers who fan-girl or fan-boy out on that cooking show with the dude from Shameless, one of the actresses from that show is in the film too.
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If you’re still reading here’s the basic break down. Two loser lesbians start a fight club at their school in order to get laid.
Except the high school football team doesn’t like a lesbian fight club taking juice and attention away from the balls that are supposed to matters most in high school, balls. Oh gosh, they might rip away some of our power. Poor ball players. So they flip one of the girls in the girl fight club, and use her to try and sabotage the fight club.
They even almost win, but by the end it turns out they are the ones who need saving — by the girls!!!!
It has something to do with the toxic poison about to splooge out of the sprinklers, which are going to go off during the biggest football game of the season, the one that the entire movie has been leading up to, and though the plot lost me at the end I really didn’t care.
There’s just too much to appreciate in this savage queer send up to knock it.
Bottoms
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Directed by: Emma Seligman
Written by: Seligman & Rachel Sennott
Cinematography: Maria Rusche
Production Design: Nate Jones
Editor: Hanna Park
Music: Charli XCX & Leo Birenberg
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