Review: 'Bottoms' is a smart, absurd lesbian comedy that spoofs high-school movies with humor and blood

In the bitingly funny “Bottoms,” director Emma Seligman and actor Rachel Sennott — along with their former NYU classmate, the suddenly everywhere Ayo Edibiri — pay irreverent homage to the ‘90s high school movie, examining the genre’s cliches and beating the crap out of them.

Seligman and Sennott — who collaborated on Seligman’s assured directing debut, the Jewish funeral comedy “Shiva Baby” — co-wrote “Bottoms,” taking inspiration from such neo-classics as “Heathers,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” and “Superbad.” The key difference is the lenses of violence and lesbianism through which those movies are viewed.

PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Edibiri) are going into senior year at Rockbridge Falls High School with the reputation of being those two “gay, untalented and ugly” girls in school. In a school that idolizes the football team — so much so that the players walk around school in their game uniforms, pads and all, and nobody bats an eye. 

PJ pines for head cheerleader Brittany (Kaia Gerber). Meanwhile, Josie has an unrequited crush on Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), Brittany’s cheer co-captain and longtime boyfriend of the preening star quarterback, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine, who played the prince in Camila Cabello’s girl boss “Cinderella” and the super-gay rom-com “Red, White and Royal Blue”).

A run-in with Jeff leads their principal (Wayne Pére) to threaten expulsion, which prompts Josie to blurt out a lie that she and PJ are starting self-defense classes for the girls at school. PJ runs with the idea, arguing that starting an after-hours fight club for girls could be the way to get Brittany and Isabel to start “kissing us on the mouths.” With some help from a fellow outcast, Hazel (Ruby Cruz) and a sign-off from their laid-back social studies teacher, Mr. G (former Seattle Seahawks star Marshawn Lynch, who’s really funny), the club is a go.

Seligman and Sennott’s script is bracingly funny, skewering the high-school-as-life intensity and the baked-in misogyny of that generation of teen comedies. Add another layer of humor in the in-the-room riffing between Sennott and Edibiri (who’s now starring in both “The Bear” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”), who have the bantering skills of two people who have been friends for years (which they have). 

“Bottoms” may not be everyone’s cup of tea — the humor can get raunchy and the action comically bloody and violent particularly in the finale, when Rockbridge Falls faces their evil arch rivals. As a swing-for-the-fences send-up of high school movies that finds depth in its absurdity, “Bottoms” comes out on top. 

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‘Bottoms’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, September 1, at theaters everywhere. Rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language and some violence. Running time: 92 minutes.