Bottoms (film)
Bottoms is a 2023 American satirical teen sex comedy film directed by Emma Seligman, from a screenplay she co-wrote with Rachel Sennott. The film stars Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz (in her feature film debut), Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Dagmara Domińczyk, and Marshawn Lynch. Its plot follows two high school senior girls who set up a fight club as a way to hook up with cheerleaders. Bottoms premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2023, and was released in the United States on August 25, 2023, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film received positive reviews from critics. Plot
PJ and Josie are unpopular lesbian best friends at Rockbridge Falls High School who have never had sex. Josie and PJ pine for popular  cheerleaders Isabel and Brittany, respectively. At the beginning of their school year, PJ and Josie, joined by their friend Hazel, attend the local fair, where they witness Isabel and her boyfriend Jeff, the quarterback of the Rockbridge Falls Vikings, having an argument. Isabel gets into PJ and Josie's car, and they softly bump Jeff's knees when he refuses to move out of the way. Jeff falls to the ground, feigning severe injury. When school starts, rumors spread that PJ and Josie were in juvenile detention over the summer and that the girls had physically fought Jeff. When Principal Meyers threatens them with expulsion, Josie lies that they were simply practicing for a feminist "self-defense club". PJ and Josie decide to actually set up the self-defense club in the name of female empowerment with Hazel's help, though they secretly want to use it to get attractive girls to have sex with them. They ask Mr. G, a careless teacher currently going through a divorce, to be their advisor. The club grows closer through their chaotic and violent practice, while PJ and Josie continue their lie about attending juvie. Hazel discovers that her mother is having an affair with Jeff. Josie tells Isabel, and Isabel breaks up with Jeff in front of the student body in the cafeteria. The club decide to vandalize Jeff's house with eggs and toilet paper, though Hazel builds a bomb that blows up his car. Faced with the club's disbandment, PJ and Hazel bicker, and PJ humiliates Hazel for being a loner. The following evening, Josie invites Isabel to her room, where they have sex. Meanwhile, PJ kisses Brittany, but Brittany informs her that she is straight. At the pep rally for the upcoming football game against longtime rival Huntington High School, Tim, a Vikings player, calls on Hazel to represent the club by fighting a boxer in combat. Hazel is severely injured and Tim reveals the lies behind PJ and Josie's "fight club" and time in juvie, publicly humiliating them in retaliation for opposing the football team. PJ and Josie argue over who was responsible for the club and fall out, and the two are ostracized at school. Josie seeks advice from her childhood babysitter Rhodes, who reveals that per tradition, Huntington intends to kill a Rockbridge football player at the upcoming game. Hoping to prevent this, PJ and Josie rekindle their friendship, and then make up with Hazel and the rest of the girls in the club, though they are unable to recruit Isabel and Brittany. They realize Huntington High has tied several large barrels of pineapple juice into the football field's sprinkler system to cause a deadly allergic reaction for Jeff. After a bomb attached to a tree fails, PJ and Hazel divert everyone's attention by publicly making out. Upon the arrival of Huntington High's team, Isabel and Brittany rejoin the club and a brutal, bloody brawl ensues between the players and the fight club. The girls kill much of the team and render the rest unconscious, ending with Rockbridge's victory via forfeit. The club is celebrated for saving Jeff. Josie and Isabel embrace with a kiss. The tree bomb finally explodes, interrupting the celebration. Cast

Production
In April 2021, it was announced that Seligman and Sennott were working with Orion Pictures and Brownstone Productions, with Elizabeth Banks, Max Handelman, and Alison Small producing for Brownstone, and Alana Mayo producing for Orion. It is the third collaboration between Seligman and Sennott after the 2018 short film Shiva Baby and her 2020 feature-length adaptation. Whilst promoting that film, Seligman described her next project as a "campy queer high school comedy in the vein of Wet Hot American Summer but more for a Gen-Z queer audience". In April 2022, it was announced that Ayo Edebiri, Marshawn Lynch, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Dagmara Domińczyk and Punkie Johnson were added to the cast. Filming was scheduled to take place in New Orleans between April 18 and May 27, 2022. Seligman has said that she cast Marshawn Lynch at the suggestion of Mayo, who pointed her to his appearance on the Netflix series Murderville, the majority of which he had improvised. On September 12, 2022, it was confirmed by The New York Times that filming had wrapped. Sennott described the film as, "Two girls in a classic American football town who start a fight club under the guise of female empowerment, but it's actually so they can have sex with cheerleaders". Seligman faced significant difficulties during the processes of pitching, shooting and editing Bottoms, the bulk of which were due to the potentially alienating nature of the film's overtly sexual, lesbian premise. She and Sennott received a number of rejections while introducing the concept to various studios, and often were not even permitted to properly pitch their idea to executives. Additionally, several companies declined to feature their products in the film due to its supposedly "offensive" content. Once their project was accepted by Orion, they were nearly unable to find high school campuses in New Orleans that were willing to lend their space; Seligman had to resort to shooting mostly in an abandoned elementary school and a college gymnasium. The initial drafts of the script included scenes of PJ and Josie being sent to a "militaristic boot camp" for "horny girls", where Punkie Johnson's character would've been introduced as head of the camp; however, these scenes were removed due to poor reception at test screenings. Eunice Jera Lee served as costume designer on the film. She took inspiration from Grease (1978), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Heathers (1988), Jawbreaker (1999), and Bring It On (2000). Music 

The original film score for Bottoms was composed by Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg. In addition, the film features songs such as "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne, "Pain" by King Princess, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, and "Party 4 U" by Charli XCX. Release
Bottoms premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2023. The film was given a limited theatrical release in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 25, 2023, before expanding to additional screens on September 1, 2023. It was also released theatrically in Canada on the same day. The film was released in the US and Canada on Amazon Prime Video on September 22. Warner Bros. Pictures is set to release the film in the United Kingdom and Ireland on November 3, 2023, and later in Australia and New Zealand on November 30. Reception

Box office
, Bottoms has grossed $12 million in the United States and Canada. The film opened in limited release at ten theaters in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin, grossing $461,052 in its opening weekend, making for a per-theater average of $46,105. This was the highest per-screen average on ten or more screens since Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). The film expanded to 715 theaters in its second weekend, making $3 million, and a total of $3.58 million over the four-day Labor Day frame. Critical response
  Audiences polled by PostTrak gave the film a 93% positive score, with women under 25 giving it 98% score and 96% saying they would definitely recommend it. Reviewing the film for Variety, following its premiere at South by Southwest, Owen Gleiberman commended the direction and screenplay (particularly its characters and humor), stating: "Bottoms is unlike any high-school comedy you've ever seen. It's a satire of victimization, a satire of violence, and a satire of itself. It walks a tightrope between sensitivity and insanity (with a knowing bit of inanity), and it's full of moments that are defiantly what we once used to call incorrect". Valerie Complex of Deadline Hollywood admired the lead performances and Seligman's direction, but found some faults with the screenplay, ultimately concluding: "Bottoms is fun, but with some slight tweaks this could have been an epic exploration of the gray areas of queerness and what it means to stand in the center of that as an adolescent". Referring to the film as the "horniest, bloodiest high school movie of the 21st century" in a highly enthusiastic review for Rolling Stone, David Fear lauded every aspect of the film, including its direction, screenplay and cast performances. References

External links
 Official MGM website
 

2023 comedy films
2023 films
2023 LGBT-related films
2020s American films
2020s buddy comedy films
2020s coming-of-age comedy films
2020s English-language films
2020s female buddy films
2020s high school films
2020s satirical films
2020s sex comedy films
2020s teen comedy films
American buddy comedy films
American coming-of-age comedy films
American female buddy films
American high school films
American satirical films
American sex comedy films
American teen comedy films
American teen LGBT-related films
Brownstone Productions films
Female bisexuality in film
Films produced by Elizabeth Banks
Lesbian-related films
LGBT-related coming-of-age films
LGBT-related sex comedy films
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films
Orion Pictures films
Teen sex comedy films