“Bottoms,” by Emma Seligman, is a newly released LGBTQ+ comedy that has rung in the ears of the queer community. It’s described by critics and fans as a comedic genius and a must-watch. It stars Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri, who play PJ and Jose: two unpopular, untalented, ugly, lesbian best friends who, in an effort to escape an unfortunate situation, start an all-female fight club that’s characterized as promoting female empowerment with the main intention of luring in the hot and popular cheerleaders. While trying to get out of one bad situation, they dig themselves right into another. “Bottoms” was officially released in theaters on Aug. 25, has a running time of 1 hour and 32 minutes, and is rated R.
As expected, its ratings are fairly high: it has a staggering 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, 5/5 on Insider, 4/5 on Common Sense Media, and 7.9/10 on IMDb. In its opening weekend, Bottoms grossed $461,052, and as of Sept. 8, it made $5.3 million at the box office with an $11.3 million budget. Variety called Bottoms “unlike any high-school comedy you’ve ever seen.”
Bottoms is full of satire; it frequently pokes fun at high school stereotypes by exaggerating the traits of generic or typical characters. The antagonist, Jeff, played by Nicholas Galitzine, is a petulant, self-absorbed, immature jock who wants to destroy the fight club. His character is dramatized to mock the jock archetype. It’s painfully clear that Bottoms is targeted at queers, young adults, and women. The jokes were funny but repetitive. It mainly joked about being lesbian and female reproductive parts, occasionally referencing one character’s odd attachment to Jeff. The real star was Mr. G, portrayed by football player Marshawn Lynch, a careless high school teacher and supervisor of the fight club. Mr. G’s jokes were the funniest of them all; he flaunted his familiarity with the female reproductive parts to his students, regularly mentioned his decaying love life, and switched back-and-forth between loving women and hating them. All his jokes were made in a timely manner. Overall, I would rate Bottoms a 3/5. The lesbian jokes are overused and repetitive, dragging it down to a 2, but Mr. G’s funny quips more than makeup for it, bringing it up to a 3.
On Mar. 11, “Bottoms” premiered at South by Southwest (SXSW), a film festival in Austin, Texas. It had a limited release, only being available in four cities across 10 theaters: Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City. On September 1st, it dramatically expanded from 10 theaters to over 700. For now, it’s exclusively being shown in theaters, but since it’s distributed through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and produced by Orion Pictures, it’s predicted to be available on Amazon Prime Video this year in November and able to be purchased digitally on PVOD platforms sometime in October.