BOTTOMS — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

If you want to be truly impressed by some acting talent and versatility, watch Nicholas Galitzine as posh gay Prince Henry in Red, White and Royal Blue on Prime Video, and then go see him as meathead football player Jeff in Bottoms. To be fair, neither movie is exactly “highbrow” and neither seems especially challenging for its performers—but, these two characters are wildly different from each other, almost opposites, and yet Galitzine embodies them both believably, He’s the kind of actor whose talent you don’t truly realize until you’ve seen him in multiple roles.

To be fair, Red, White and Royal Blue and Bottoms do have a couple of key things in common: they both have two gay protagonists (gay men in the former; lesbians in the latter), and both put their own unique stamp on modern camp. That very thing is what makes both films worth watching.

There’s a lot more to Bottoms to recommend it, not least of which is equally (if not more so) versatile Ayo Edebiri, whose Josie in Bottoms is also wildly different from her Sydney in Hulu’s The Bear. (Josie is a bit more similar to Janet in Theater Camp, another surprisingly delightful comedy from this year.) It’s also great to see two gay main characters who are lifelong platonic friends, and this story is not about them having sex or falling in love with each other. In fact, there is an old-school sex comedy element to this, as it is about them aiming to get laid. Just, with other people. It’s like a typical sex comedy with dudes trying to get pussy, replacing the dudes with ladies . . . trying to get pussy.

They’re also incredibly socially awkward, which Rachel Sennott (Shiva Baby), as PJ, plays just as well as Edebiri. It’s a delight to see a movie like this that acknowledges the continued existence of homophobia but only in a cursory way, and instead characterizes a sort of evolution of how characters like these get sidelined in high school—not just for being gay, but for being “gay and untalented.”

I should stress here that Bottoms goes out of its way to be over-the-top silly, in a way that almost miraculously works. I may want to watch it again just to catch more of the gags in the details and in the background. Many times a funny detail comes and goes so quickly it can easily be missed, making it a potentially rewarding rewatch.

It doesn’t hurt that we also get a winning performance by none other than Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G, the unlikely teacher duped into serving as teacher “advisor” to the self-defense club devised by PJ and Josie as a scheme to get under some cheeleaders’ skirts. Lynch plays a doofus who is only sexist until some high school girls prove that they can be badasses.

Now, I must admit to a certain amount of disappointment, particularly in the nature of this club that becomes a surprisingly violent “fight club.” The trailer made me expect a lot more comedic ultra-violence, and I suppose I should be grateful that director and co-writer Emma Seligman uses it more sparingly than expected. I just thought this would be a bit more of an action comedy, based on the marketing, but it’s really more of a campy teen comedy. By those standards, though, Bottoms still succeeds, and is consistently funny. What more should I want from it?

Besides, there is a fantastic brawl between the fight club and an adversary I won’t spoil here that serves as the climactic sequence of the movie, and it’s kind of worth the wait. I had a somewhat odd experience with Bottoms, leaving the theater feeling like I enjoyed it but still wished it had been better, or funnier. But the more I’ve thought about it since, the more I’ve decided I placed unfairly high expectations of it, and on its own terms, it delivers on its promise.