Streaming Shuffle
"Could the ugly, untalented gays please report to the principal's office?"
There’s some good news for teenage losers like Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Rachel Sennott). Times have changed. Their classmates don’t hate them for being gay … they hate them for being gay and untalented.
It’s senior year, and it doesn’t look like they’re even close to boning their respective crushes, ethereal cheerleader princess Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and sardonic second-in-command cheerleader Brittany (Kaia Gerber). But then an impulsive lie and a confused rumor mill give our sad sacks an unexpected in: suddenly, they’re pressed into founding an all-girls “self-defense club,” a.k.a., a fight club. And fight clubs are hot. PJ and Josie start rocketing up the high school popularity charts, but their empire is built on lies—and the school’s beloved football team is beginning to resent losing the spotlight.
Bottoms makes a glorious case for high-concept comedies having their own worldbuilding. Almost nothing here would be technically plausible in reality, but Bottoms lives by its own comic law: take the subtext of real-life high school madness, make it explicit, and send it soaring to goofy heights.
“I really value when people use violence and raise their voices for me. It’s actually one of my love languages.”
Isabel and Josie
“Is the other one gi—“
“The other one’s gifts.”
Real-life high school madness: The big homecoming game with a rival school is a Big Deal, and opposing teams play pranks on each other.
Bottoms: Every year, rival school Huntington mercilessly slaughters a player from Rockbridge Falls: “In ’77, they burned him at the stake with his dog. In ’92, they drowned him in a giant kiddie pool. And in ’03, they pulled his body apart with horses.”
Real-life high school madness: Successful football players can get worshipful treatment from teachers, the administration, their fellow students, and the town as a whole.
Bottoms: There’s literally a Sistine Chapel recreation of quarterback Jeff (Nichols Galitzine) in the cafeteria.
Real-life high school madness: Hey, there are some events that feel like they’re deliberately sexualizing these high school cheerleaders.
Bottoms: The pep squad performance becomes a wet T-shirt contest, and fundraisers involve cheerleaders selling their underwear.
Real-life high school madness: It’s intriguing when there are rumors that someone’s a badass troublemaker, even if the gossip isn’t always right.
Bottoms: Want to get laid? Tell everyone you got into gladiatorial shiv fights in juvie and once punched a girl until she died. It’s okay, she was resuscitated.
This is all gleefully bananas, but it’s grounded in real insight about the (often dark1) absurdities of growing up, being horny, and figuring yourself out. It never stops pushing all its made-explicit subtext to the breaking point and beyond, but its full-throttle commitment to the joke—eventually, there’s an Anchorman-style battle royale with a major body count—doesn’t preclude its actually-pretty-touching sincerity. This is a movie that makes unironic use of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.” It’s all hilarious, but it’s also all high school.
Director Emma Seligman has also rounded up an incredible cast who know exactly how sell all this, and she and Sennott (as co-writer) have given them a wealth of good material to work with. One of my favorite supporting characters is the nervy, paint-huffing Sylvie (Summer Joy Campbell), a kind of exuberant, wide-eyed girl Jesse Pinkman, but the biggest scene-stealer is probably Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G, the fight club’s oblivious faculty sponsor who vacillates wildly from half-baked-but-wholehearted support for the girls’ project to open crackpot misogyny to a 30 Rock-esque level of zany disconnection from reality.2 It makes sense that the one time the film breaks its own reality is to comment on how inappropriate he’s being, as if even in this world, this guy is a little too much.
Bottoms deserves to become a classic high school movie. It has all the jokes, virginal awkwardness, pining, frustration, friendship break-ups and make-ups, and day-saving epiphanies about social connection, school pride, and the differences between crushes and relationships that anyone could possibly need. If its adult content—and tart willingness to cross the line—keeps it from getting crowned prom queen, though, I’ll settle it for it lasting as one of the best comedies of the decade.
Bottoms is streaming on Amazon Prime
About the writer
Lauren James
Lauren James is a writer who wears many different hats (and pen names). She lives in Connecticut with her wife and two cats.
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Anthologized
A little slice of American folklore that feels like it's been here all along.
Streaming Shuffle
You make your royal bed, and you lie in it.
Anthologized
Alone in vast space and timeless infinity: one man in a ghost town.
Streaming Shuffle
A beautiful slice-of-life film that helped make a career.
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Justified, S6: “Dark as a Dungeon”, “Burned” – some high points in these episodes but the show does unfortunately feel pretty “burned” out to me at this point. Question to other viewers: Is the “City Primeval” thing any good? I probably need reassurances if I’m going to bother going for 100% Justified completion rather than just limping to the end of this season.
I’ll punt the City Primeval question down the line–at the end of Justified, I felt like the story had reached a natural conclusion and that I didn’t need a sequel, so I never watched it. I remember liking the book pretty well, though?
I wouldn’t recommend it – they awkwardly insert Raylan into a different Leonard book and it shows.
Is it any good? Yeah. Is it as good as any season of the original Justified? Probably not.
Hmm given my extremely lukewarm reactions to season 3 and 6, sounds like I’m out.
Justified, Season One, Episode Ten, “The Hammer”
Can you believe this show only had Stephen Root as a guest character?! Although I have that reaction to a) a lot of Justified guest stars and b) a lot of Stephen Root characters. Anyway, this one makes the interesting swing at explicitly tying the case o’ the week into Raylan’s story thematically, which I don’t think works that well, but the basic building blocks of the show are good enough to overcome the weak idea. Root is fantastic at playing a guy who intentionally builds his legend (“My personality invites derision.”); very Leonardian in the details and idea, and Root plays him like a lot of masculine older guys in that he’s just, very slightly, needy towards Raylan, hoping to reveal or shape some masculinity in him without that being unbearable to be around. It’s obviously in his actions, but it’s also in the way he stares at Raylan hoping he’ll say the right thing.
“Your directions were clear. Your intent, not so much.”
Obviously, this also dives deep into Boyd. It occurs to me that Boyd might be the least Leonardian aspect of the show, aside from his dialogue and ability to zig when you expect him to zag. He is Raylan’s true opposite in that he has the force of a bullet and a direction he’s clearly going in; he’s intentionally building enemies with the same zeal that he’s building friends, and he moves and speaks with a full confidence he’s going somewhere with this. It makes it stand out when he’s genuinely thrown off by the discovery he’s killed a guy, and even then, you see the gears turning in his head; how can I make this work in my favour?
Boyd is a True Believer, at his happiest when he gives himself up to a higher power. In his own twisted way, this makes him the truest Leonardian character; the Leonardian universe is one where reality itself will upend on you, and you have zero control over when or where it happens. Boyd generally doesn’t pretend he has any control over anything but his own actions; it’s not that he doesn’t manipulate people (this alone has his ‘flock’) but I get the impression he doesn’t really care whether people listen to him or not and knows this makes him charismatic to certain idiots. The only person he tries to control in any way is Raylan, trying to teach him to let go of expectations of this world, and even then he knows Raylan won’t listen if he doesn’t want to. Raylan is very good at pretending otherwise, but the stupidity of others burns him up. Interested to see where this goes.
Raylan goes Vic Mackey in smashing a guy’s bongs, though he at least pays for them.
Biggest Laugh: Raylan discovering the witness from the pilot didn’t actually see Boyd, the most Leonardian plot turn in the episode.
Top Ownage: Hard to pick. I’d say Raylan telling Virgil to stay in the bathroom and he’ll leave first.
A recurring guest star though! He does pop up a few more times over the seasons.
Nice.
Raylan’s threat to continue being “hilariously clumsy” always makes me laugh.
I think Boyd creates an interesting obstacle and opportunity for the show by living past the pilot when he wasn’t “meant” to (such is the power of the Goggins); it feels like the series does some of its most original work with him, but it’s like he has a different natural tenor/genre from everyone else. Vaguely, to avoid spoilers: at its best, that subtle mismatch sets up a fascinating tension and opens up questions about what kind of story Raylan is in. But there are times that potential gets closed off, and the execution of those choices doesn’t always work for me.
Live music — forgot this from the weekend! First it was Porchfest, the annual “play on your front stoop/porch” event that now has 500 bands, we saw Mrs. Miller’s friend’s band and they were great, Buffalo Tom/Gin Blossoms scruffy 90s rock. Walked around a little bit and heard more music from younger bands, a lot of great energy and a lot of public drinking — I haven’t been to Porchfest in years and apparently it has become quite the party. Good vibes! Then to the distillery for Sarah Borges and her band, the distillery’s sound guy was good but they don’t have a real system and they do have a big building with a high roof, so vocals in particular got a bit muddy. But more concerning was the shift to a rarely-good musical style, Let The Guitarist Sing A Bit — he’s a fantastic guitarist and a decent vocalist but I am not here to hear him sing. The band sounded good, especially new material, but I am wary of where this could be leading.
Sinners — sometimes, Let The Guitarist Sing A Bit is good! Miles Caton is a hell of a find, what a voice. The Marvelization complaints are not wrong, in particular the credits busting in before the denouement are dopey — this happens in a lot of movies now I think and it’s dumb, don’t yank me out of the film when there is still film to go, and it would’ve been easy to not do this. But on the whole good to great stuff, the two Jordans are fantastic and O’Connell is a hell of a villain, the look of want in his eyes when he comes across the juke joint is the flip side of Lindo’s funny and cutting anecdote about playing the blues for white people — this is not a thing to live, it is a thing to take. And Coogler understands that vampirism, this taking, needs to be appealing and seductive, and he makes O’Connell’s big musical number awesome and horrifying at the same time. It is the melting pot and it is also an eternal present, instead of the communing with the ancestors and descendants that the other big setpiece shows (and I absolutely loved that, the long take encompassing more and more surprises that lock into place immediately). Thorny stuff! And things that denouement continues to engage with, “we are all sinners” is the tagline and desire for money is a sin that our protagonists succumb to over and over; the final scene admits this and the existence of larger sin but finds an accommodation with it. Thorny stuff! Although the best part of the movie is not thorny at all, it is the bit at the end that suggests Coogler has watched The Train and knows when something besides words or music needs to speak and what it needs to say. Hell yeah.
I’ve voiced my complaints about Sinners but yeah, O’Connell is excellent, as is Lindo (as usual).
(hell yeah live music)
Wooo, live music and cinematic music! Love the idea of O’Connell’s music number representing a kind of vampiric eternal present, with his immortality set off against Sammie’s ability, which is so tied to his mortality, his positioning as one more finite rock in the ongoing stream of time.
The movie that came to mind, of all things, was Memoria – another movie about sound unstuck in time, and about engaging with the past and future as real things in that stream.
I’ve been toying with an essay today on Sinners and the compelling and, as far as I know, unique way Coogler ties together white surpremacist thinking and vampirism. Remmick isn’t quite a white supremacist – I understand Coogler has referred to Remmick as predating race as we understand it – but it’s undeniable the way vampirism is tied into someone trying to absorb a culture.
Yes, that absorbtion is key and note how separate from (and contemptuous of) Remnick is of the Klan. But his way is still eradication. I think the ending complicates things greatly because his way is not the only way to be a vampire, but there is still a lack of place and history even as the current vamps feed off the present (dig those hip styles).
Hell yeah! Started weeping in my seat with that long take, Sammie’s music recalling past, present, future, and multiple diasporas, Gram Parsons’ Great American Music realized for 2025.
I love how the first visitor is not just from the future but Futurist.
Woooooooo (Lauren already said exactly what I was going to say here, fuck)!
We need to start doing cover versions of comments in situations like these!
The Righteous Gemstones, “For He Is a Liar and the Father of Lies” and “As to How They Might Destroy Him”
It feels entirely accurate to the Gemstone children ethos that they can, with some qualms, tackle the idea that their father might have murdered someone, but they can’t cope even a little with the idea that he might start dating again. Also, the blood on Eli’s khakis being from a ball-shaving incident gone wrong is the funniest solution to that particular mystery.
Baby Billy is back! And then gone again, with history repeating itself! I continue to be glad the show is giving Walton Goggins so many chances to sing. Even aside from that, “As to How They Might Destroy Him” is a good mini-showcase, letting him go full ham and find some smaller, more painfully sincere moments, especially in the flashback when he knows he’s gearing up to abandon his family. (Hey, Christmas shopping is hard on everybody.) That mall scene is the most we’ve seen Baby Billy do so far on the “exerting himself to be kind” front, and the bittersweet, darkly funny payoff that that’s because he knows what a significant moment it is is great. Dying at him and Tiffany talking about her being a “toilet baby” in front of BJ’s increasingly more uncomfortable family.
“As to How They Might Destroy Him” is also fantastic on the Judy and BJ front. I like that while BJ’s family is far more normal than Judy’s, there is some real passive-aggressive bullshit there, just dressed up with better manners and a better sense of what’s socially appropriate. They’re not as obnoxious as his in-laws, but they’re also not as genuinely nice as he is. Love that while Judy spends the whole episode looking for–and wildly fabricating–any excuse to hate these people (including channeling Flowers in the Attic), her best moment is when she actually is furious with them on BJ’s behalf for completely dashing his enthusiasm about his romper with a cummerbund. Just let him wear his weird post-baptism finery! He was so excited about it!
Great violent one-two punch of an ending here, with Eli caving to Kelvin’s heckling and breaking his son’s thumbs and then Jesse and Amber accidentally party bussing into Junior’s line of fire.
Keef trying to get the Muscle Men chanting again and failing is unforgettable, as is “Once I was an afraid man…now I’m brave and strong.”
The costuming is a high point of Gemstones in general, but I don’t think they ever were as extraordinary as in season 2. BJ’s pink crushed velvet romper with satin accents and those Swarovski-encrusted loafers is EVERYTHING. Judy was right to rip into his family for being dicks about it.
They really are holding men’s fashion back!
I don’t have many specific comments but I am thrilled at the pace with which you’re going through this. And the second half of this season kicks ass.
I’m having such a blast with it. It says a lot that I’m going to be traveling next week, and I’m actually kind of bummed that as nice as the vacation should be, I’m still kind of bummed about how it will mean having a Gemstone-less week. But I should at least get to finish up S2 before I leave!
Kojak, “Kojak’s Days, Part One” – Unlike previous episodes billed as parts one and two that were actually two hour episodes split in half for syndication and streaming, this actually aired as two parts. Essentially, two very busy days for Kojak, with multiple cases and an attempt to balance work and his latest girlfriend (Maud Adams). I don’t think this was intended to pave the way for cops shows with more than one case an episode – Barney Miller of all shows might have been the first to do that – it’s certainly a very different approach than usual, and allows a bit more of a glimpse into Kojak after hours. Lots of familiar faces here, but the most interesting ones are, in their TV debuts, Robert Picardo (with hair!), John Hurt, and Liz Sheridan.
Frasier, “Four for the Seesaw” – A random meeting with two kitchen designers leads Frasier and Niles to a weekend with the women. Only Niles isn’t sure he’s ready, and naturally it all goes to bits. As ever, “Frasier doesn’t get any” is a bit hard to watch, but it does come from a stronger starting place than usual. Though the funniest scene is not related, as Martin reads a bodice ripper to a flu-ridden Daphne. His discomfort is hysterical.
NBA Playoffs, IND-CLE – Goodbye, Cleveland. Tyrese Haliburton continues to impress. The Cavs did not, though they really did try.
Righteous Gemstones series finale – one spoiler was a touch too obvious for me (though a great showcase for an underrated actor’s dramatic skills), and overall, S4 was a step down from the previous seasons, but as far as “the best show on TV” goes, still pretty great. Favorite parts included Bradley Cooper’s nastiness as the first real Gemstone (and sincerity – he really does believe by the end, and you see that when he meditates before beginning the Bible), the cocaine-fueled disco Teenjus dance, the siblings crawling across the lake house, and Stephen Dorff doing some ludicrous faux-dodges and dips when Jesse has him at gunpoint, like he wants to get away but also doesn’t want to be TOO humiliated. Put this man in more TV, please, plus more Megan Mullaly. (Devastating in one finale shot here.) I’m gonna miss this show!
The final block of Andor episodes. The show delivers! And I’d comfortably recommend it while having zero particular affinity for anything Star Wars.
Interesting in watching Rogue One after this?
*Interested
Yeah, if we’d had more time last night we would have just gone straight into it then.
I’m getting a Heathers vibe from this review. (“I love my dead gay son”) I have to watch that one again, and this too.
I’ve somehow never seen Heathers and really need to fix that.
Don’t feel bad, I’ve never seen Pretty Woman.
Dude. Dude. You really should. And then once you’ve seen the movie you can get into the musical soundtrack, which absolutely rules!
Hee hee, fun movie. I do enjoy the exaggerated-reality details; they all feel of a logical extreme to typical stupid high school shit.
I knew you’d like this! If you hadn’t seen it before, I had a mental note to pitch it to you specifically.
Hey, I even found my original review, from a bit over a year ago:
https://www.the-solute.com/i-am-zack-snyder-and-zack-snyder-is-me/#comment-6447353961
That’s a great point about the near-total absence of adults. It turns up in a lot of teen stories to some extent, but it’s especially noticeable here with all the girls collecting major bruises all the time. Apparently all their parents are distracted by Jeff. (“Shut up, nerd! I fucked your mom!”)
The title is okay, but they could also have called it 10,000 Things I Hate About You.
I also discovered when searching for my original review that you made a comparison to 10 Things I Hate About You there, as well.
I went into this with high expectations and was disappointed (although there are a good amount of laughs) and I think a lot of it comes down to that exaggerated reality not working for me. It feels like an uneven middle ground between parody (like Not Another Teen Movie) and absurdism (like Better Off Dead). This is David Wain territory and while that can play better on rewatch when I am more familiar with the vibe (WHAS) it can also just be confused. But another comp might be Superbad, which I also didn’t really vibe with — Sennott seems to be channeling Jonah Hill in pushy obnoxiousness if nothing else.
I’ve only seen Superbad once, but I didn’t really vibe with it at the time either, so I wonder if either I’d like it more now or if this just works for me when that didn’t. I think the consistent type of exaggeration meant this didn’t feel like it landed in that neither-fish-nor-fowl territory for me, but I’ve definitely seen things that fell into that kind of uncanny comedic valley.
I don’t think it quite lived up to the hype myself– I concluded my review with “I’d give it, oh, three out of four stars sounds right”– but then, I also saw Superbad twice in the theaters*, so I don’t know what your deal is there.
(* – as much as I like to crack jokes about it being a homoerotic love story.)
I think I saw the extended cut of Superbad, which I’m sure did it no favors, but I also really disliked Hill. I should give it another try at some point.
Heck yeah, funny movie. And you’re right in pointing out that part of its comedy success is knowing where the lines have been redrawn. Frank sex talk, gay characters, bullying athletes – not edgy. But a character panicking about his social status immediately wonders aloud if he should shoot up the school? Holy shit.
That last bit got an actual gasp out of me even as I was laughing at it, and then the way it comes back to provide additional payoff is so clever.
This movie had me fucking wheezing. I also just love it when female characters get to be as gross and morally dodgy as the men, but perhaps that goes without saying. Ayo Edebiri is so great in this it’s almost my favorite performance of hers from that year, and that is a high bar to clear.
Absolute same on the appreciation for female characters getting to be messy and morally dubious, and this is such a great (and fun) pick for that. And hell yes on Edebiri. She gets some of my favorite line deliveries in the movie.