Watched this one on Prime.

Bottoms is what you would get if Fight Club was about teenage lesbians, and that’s all you need to know. But I’m going to tell you more.

Directed by Emma Seligman who you may know if you saw her last and first film Shiva Baby (2020), Bottoms is a movie about two high school girls who start a fight club to get out of trouble with the Principal, but also so they can pick up and bang cheerleaders. No I’m not joking. I’ll tell you more about the movie’s universe in the coming paragraphs.

The film stars Seligman favorite Rachel Sennott as PJ and Ayo Edebiri (who you may recognize as voicing April O’Neil in that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie) as Josie. The two get in trouble at school after Josie hits the star quarterback Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) with her car, leading to the two starting a feminist personal defense class. A fight club, as PJ puts it. The two latch on to a rumor that they spent the summer in Juvie and create fake bad girl personas out of it to attract members.

But every school club needs a teacher to sponsor it, and who do the girls pick? Mr. G of course, played by, and let me check my notes on this, Marshawn Lynch. Yeah, the football guy. The standout star here is Ruby Cruz as Hazel, daughter of musician Brandon Cruz of the reunited Dead Kennedys. This is Rachel’s debut feature film and she knocks it out of the park, putting on a great performance and stealing the show. Also she’s adorable.

Incidentally the film also has Kaia Gerber as Brittany, who is the daughter of Cindy Crawford. Havana Rose Liu plays Isabel, the girl Josie is in lesbian with.

Actually the standout star of this is Miles Fowler who plays Tim, the second in command of the football team and fanatic of Jeff. Tim spends the movie trying to undermine the girls in the fear that they might be taking a little too much attention away from the school’s football team and the big upcoming game against Huntington. Tim is always scheming, and I loved the way Miles uses his body movements and facial gestures to create something that feels almost CG. It’s all in his creepy, creepy smile.

The movie has a massively exaggerated feel to it that reminds me of Beau is Afraid, where everything is dialed up to eleven and everyone’s personalities are pushed to the limits of reality. People treat violence, terrorism, and murder as just another fact of life to be navigated, the football stars are man-children and the high school football team does nothing to hide its horniness. The high school girls sell their used underwear as well as used trucks for some reason as a school fundraising operation, and there’s signs all over the school that pineapples are worse than drugs because Jeff is allergic to pineapples. Eat a bag of dicks.]

Oh and the football teams ritualistically murder each other sometimes.

It’s a hilarious film that is unrelentingly horny. It’s a premise and an execution we can all get behind.

Rating: A