Bottoms (2023) is for the female gaze. Bottoms is for the girls who used to sit on the bench during P.E and had never had any interest in sports and neither understand the reason people are enthusiasts for those. Bottoms is for the girls who were always the last ones to be picked at team sports and then got yelled at because we obviously played terribly. Bottoms is for the girls who doesn’t understand why sport is such a big deal, since the only things we gained from it were bullying and humiliation at such a young age.
what is bottoms about?
But what is this movie about, after all? Bottoms goes around two best friends, PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiti) who are in love with the two most popular girls at school, Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), respectively. However, Isabel’s boyfriend, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), is the king of the high school, the captain of the football team. Thus, the jocks and its associates run the school. But they are also extremely aggressive with those who are in the bottom, such as PJ and Josie.
In order to impress their love interests, the besties decide to create a self-defense club, so that the female students can feel empowered. And then, Britt and Isabel would be so thankful to them that they would fall for PJ and Josie. Rolling Stone wasn’t lying when they called it “the horniest and the bloodiest high school movie of the twenty first century.”
Bottoms has the typical 2000s movie aesthetic: high school, jocks, unpopular nerds in love with the popular girls, etc. Admittedly, one thing came to my attention, they rarely use mobile phones. Even though the movie is set nowadays (based on their outfits and behavior), being connected is not important – the producers do not use those cheap and unreal plot ideas in each they send a text to the whole school instantly, or a random video goes viral. We are all tired of that and it is not even realistic, movie writers just use that tactic because they ran out of ideas and are bored.
The High school movie we needed
That said, Bottoms is definitely NOT boring! Apart from the high school movies that were released in this decade, Bottoms surprises us from the beginning to end. Comedy and drama are well-balanced. Bonus points for the soundtrack – Avril Lavigne and “Total Eclipse of the Heart”?! That is a masterpiece.
Not only that, but also the actors choice were chef kiss. For the first time in a long time, they actually LOOK like they are in high school. PJ and Josie were so relatable and human. The way they dress to go to school, the way they are “delulu” and their behavior are so realistic and well portrayed. Even Brittany’s actress is a perfect fit: whose school does not have a person who looks older? But that is the thing, it is only one person, not everyone.
Nicholas Galitzine also needs to be discussed. Not because of the actor – even though he’s great -, but what his character represents. Jeff and the other footballers are so exaggerated pictured that it becomes real. For the first time, I felt seen. They showed the world how jocks are seen at school by those who couldn’t care less about sports. Those who are just like me and can not stand to see men being glorified by throwing balls while much more intelligent girls are doing more important and relevant things at school to students and teachers do not even bet an aye.
To summarize, Bottoms is the best comedy of the decade so far, and you should definitely check it out!
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The article above was edited by Isadora Quaglia.
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