Nothing Can Top Bottoms (2023)
Alexandra Gore | October 4, 2023
When you and your best friend have been virgins for life and irrevocably in love with two cheerleaders, there is only one clear solution: start a fight club. And no, not a Tyler Durden fight club – a fight club where girls beat each other up in the name of self-defense.
Josie and PJ have been inseparable best friends since second grade. They walk the halls with their loser reputation painted on their foreheads with permanent Sharpie, and they have nothing going for them – and nothing to lose. The school doesn’t hate them for being gay, that would be plain cruel. They hate them for being gay, untalented and ugly.
Isabel and Brittany – their respective cheerleader crushes – could not be further from interested in them. That is, until a rumor slithers its way around the school: Josie spent the summer in Juvie. Suddenly they become interested in all the shit Josie ate in her tiny jail cell. There’s only one problem: Isabel is totally dating the school’s star football player Jeff.
When Jeff and Isabel get into an argument at the school’s annual carnival, Josie offers her a safe-ride. A screaming fit through a windshield later, Josie inches forward in her car and taps her bumper on Jeff’s leg. Dramatic screaming and a mob of football dudes crowd around, and they land themselves in the principal’s office. Their excuse for the dramaticized violence: they were just practicing for their self-defense club.
By the grace of God (and the female urge to be prepared for all male attacks), Isabel and Brittany join their fight club, where Josie and PJ’s plan is seemingly supposed to unpack. But, as anyone with an elaborate and mildly dramatic plan to get with their crush would know, things almost never end up as planned.
Bottoms is so good that even tops will love it. The mix of Gen-Z humor with jokes on the borderline of offensive left me hoping that the writers walked away from the project as millionaires. The simple and almost idiodic plot lays the groundwork for the perfect comfort movie by carrying away all your stresses and worries and allowing yourself to settle into a laughable (and highly unrealistic) high school life.
Cinema should strive to execute a story as well as Bottoms – a story about friendship, sex and social status translated into a mindless film where absolutely none of the jokes land flat. Your dad may not find it funny, but I sure as hell did.
In the most understated way possible, I have never laughed at a movie harder. Each and every scene carried a new absurdity that was more hysterical than the last, so much so that my ribs hurt on the drive home. If your midterm-week stress is getting the best of you, give Bottoms a watch. After all, you’re not struggling nearly as much as these loser virgins.
“Bottoms” is currently available to purchase on Amazon Prime Video.
