“Could the ugly, untalented gays please report to the Principal’s office?’’

Bottoms is the best teen comedy of the year. Writer-director Emma Seligman’s sophomore feature, Bottoms, is a chaotic, raunchy, and hilariously horny exploration of queer expression and girlhood. Ayo Edebiri and co-writer Rachel Sennot play two lesbian best friends, PJ and Josie, who go to extreme lengths to win the attention of two cheerleaders at their high school. 

Bottoms’ bizarre premise and niche humor provides a fresh and unusual addition to the comedy genre, while managing to entertain a wide-ranging audience. Bottoms’ plotline is extremely witty, with a script that borders on the classic high school comedy but has its own absurdist twist on humor. Throughout the movie, Bottoms utilizes ‘’stupid’’ humor to the maximum. From Avril Lavigne needle drops, to Marshawn Lynch clearly reading a magazine titled ‘’Divorced and Happy’’, to Josie going into an unbroken monologue about being trapped in a loveless marriage with a closeted man, the jokes in Bottoms are absurd and ridiculous. Yet, the fact that the audience is still laughing signals that the movie is doing something right. 

Unlike many other queer movies, Bottoms allows these characters to be real teenagers who aren’t ostracized for their queerness or debilitated by societal expectations. There is no coming out scene. No one struggles with their sexuality. In this way, Bottoms offers a unique representation of queerness that isn’t seen in most movies. The characters’ sexualities are not used as an obstacle that the entire plot revolves around, unlike other mainstream queer films. Essentially, Bottoms takes queerness for granted. It doesn’t apologize for it, laud it, or even comment on it. This perspective is amazingly refreshing. The normalization of queerness within the movie allows all audience members, queer or straight, to better relate to the characters. 

Ultimately, Bottoms succeeds by skillfully tapping into both the comedy and absurdity of the teen horniness that plagues queer and straight people alike. This combination of bizarre humor and relatability allows the movie to be widely entertaining, while remaining unique. Where other movies fail, Bottoms ironically punches its way to the very top.