Movie review: ‘Bottoms’ can’t top other summer comedies

2023 has been a jampacked year for movies, and the comedy genre hasn’t been ignored among the blockbusters and dramas.

The summer season kicked off with “No Hard Feelings” — a pleasant surprise for those missing the early-2000s style of short comedy flicks — and peaked with “Barbie,” a cross-genre project that played into its inherent comedic potential.

At the tail end of the summer is “Bottoms,” which is the sophomore film for up-and-coming director Emma Seligman. Her debut movie, a niche comedy titled “Shiva Baby,” was released in 2021.

“Bottoms” follows Rachel Sennott — the former star of “Shiva Baby” and a co-writer of “Bottoms” — and Ayo Edebiri as high schoolers PJ and Josie, respectively. Best friends and lesbians, they find themselves unlucky in love as their school’s social outcasts.

In a wild scheme to find girlfriends, they start an after-school, women-only self-defense club, a stark contrast to their school’s football-obsessed culture.

In doing so, they have to navigate leading the club and cultivating romantic interests, all while hiding their agenda from football players who become concerned that their girlfriends and spotlights as local celebrities are being stolen from them.

“Bottoms” drops a cinder block on the gas pedal and doesn’t let up for its entire 90-minute runtime. Jokes are delivered at a rapid speed, with the dialogue only broken up by the occasional needle drop. In fact, it might be worth checking if “Bottoms” breaks the movie record for words per minute.

Part of that is its charm — it’s chaotic, overwhelming and everything you remember being overstimulated by in high school. But the movie’s breakneck pace works against it sometimes: Some of the best jokes don’t have time to settle in because actors are on to the next one immediately, and when the script occasionally shifts tonally to a more serious topic, audiences can feel emotional whiplash from going 100-to-0 in no time at all.

It’s a shame because “Bottoms” boasts some really creative jokes, but a lot of them get lost without the utmost attention from the audience, a privilege that is not typically afforded to comedies.

“Bottoms” is reminiscent of fan-favorite shows and movies like the Netflix hit “Sex Education” or the cult classic “Heathers,” but lacks a certain consistency. While both of the aforementioned projects found an ambiance and stuck to it, “Bottoms” often feels stuck between two worlds. It’s presumably set in the early 2000s, as flip phones are popular and the school has an all-too-familiar aesthetic, but the characters sport modern haircuts and fashion that would be considered trendy today.

Though the discontinuity doesn’t seem like it would be as big of a deal for a comedy as it would be in other genres, the jokes — while still funny — don’t live up to their full potential because it’s harder to contextualize them in the right cultural landscape.

You can tell “Bottoms” is written by theater kids, and that’s not a bad thing, but it appeals to a much more niche audience than other hit comedies of the summer. Football players and popular kids are stereotypical villains, and the movie plays into tropes commonly found in Disney Original movies.

To its credit, “Bottoms” brilliantly casts former NFL superstar Marshawn Lynch as a clueless teacher and supervisor to the fight club. Lynch adds a breath of fresh air to every scene he’s in, while simultaneously appealing to a larger audience. But “Bottoms” can never quite stick the landing as well as it could’ve if only it had focused more on what works best in the movie.

Overall, “Bottoms” is worth a watch, but is not atop the 2023 best comedies list.

Rating: 3/5