Film / Bottoms

A movie about empowering women (the hot ones)

"I really value when people use violence and raise their voices for me. It's actually one of my love languages."

— Isabel

Bottoms is a 2023 comedy film from writer/director Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby). Seligman co-wrote the script with Rachel Sennott, who stars alongside Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, and Marshawn Lynch, with a score by Charli XCX and Leo Birenberg.

PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Edebiri) are dorky and unpopular lesbian high school seniors hoping to get lucky before they graduate. After an incident involving their school's star quarterback Jeff (Galitzine), the girls cover up their problem by telling their principal that they are starting a self-defense club for female solidarity. In reality, PJ and Josie use their "fight club" as a way to hook up with their respective cheerleader crushes, Brittany (Gerber) and Isabel (Liu).

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This film provides examples of:

• Adults Are Useless: The faculty at Rockbridge Falls High School — but especially Principal Meyers, who blatantly favors quarterback Jeff and the other players — are pretty useless much of the time, especially when it concerns punishing the football team. A strong example is when the football team publicly sets up Hazel to go against a much bigger wrestler, who then proceeds to brutally assault her with little to no intervention from the adults with only the fight club being willing to help Hazel afterwards.
• Age-Gap Romance: Jeff turns out to be cheating with the mother of his classmate Hazel, who is old enough she could be his mom. Before that he also was with Mrs. Reilly, an older teacher.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: The cheerleader characters (Brittany, Isabel, and Stella-Rebecca), are universally seen as beautiful and desirable by people around them, especially by the female protagonists PJ and Josie. Isabel is also dating star quarterback Jeff. And while Josie is able to genuinely connect with and romance Isabel, PJ's interest in Brittany is implied to start and stop at how she's a hot, popular cheerleader.
• Almost Kiss: Josie and Isabel almost kiss in their car until Hazel's bomb blows up Jeff's car and everyone has to flee.
• Ambiguous Time Period: The film implicitly takes place in present day (c. 2023), but the internet, modern smart phones, modern cars, etc. are sparsely featured (albeit existing, like Josie having flatscreen computer monitors). The soundtrack contains songs from both the early 2000s and the 2020s. Email is referenced, but the only cell phone featured is a mid-2000s flip phone, and at one point a character relies on a physical phone book, which is all but defunct in present day. This helps put the movie closer to the heyday of the sex comedies it parodies.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In an attempt to bond, all of the girls explain reasons they want to participate in the fight club, including stories of being stalked and fear of being killed. Sylvie, who's made constant references to her stepdad throughout the film, implying he's sexually predatory, finally reveals the reason she hates him is that he subjects her family to elaborate Friday movie nights.
• And Starring: After listing the main cast, the credits go "with Dagmara Domińczyk and Marshawn Lynch".
• Asshole Victim: Even before the big game, the Rockbridge students complain about the Huntington football team randomly assaulting them. Some of the girls even join the fight club because of their fear towards Huntington. On the day of the big game, the Huntington football players have emptied a whole barrel of pineapple juice — to which Rockbridge's Jeff is deathly allergic — and secretly put the juice in the sprinklers to, well, murder Jeff. And they try to murder the fight club too when they foil their plans to murder Jeff. The girls win, though, which results in the Huntington players all dying. It is also revealed before the game that Huntington, for some reason, has a history of producing bloodthirsty students.
• Ax-Crazy: The Huntington football team, who have a tendency of murdering their football rivals at homecoming every so often.
• The Band Minus the Face: Downplayed, as even though the Self Defense Club is dead and PJ & Josie are Hated by All, Hazel, Isabel, Brittany, Annie, and Sylvie are implied to still hangout and be together even without them.
• The Beard: Parodied. Josie, panicking about the prospect of not losing her virginity to a girl, wails about losing it to their gay classmate Matthieu, getting knocked up, and the two of them needing to enter an unhappy double-bearding marriage and moving to a convent to save face.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Most of PJ and Hazel's scenes together consist of the two insulting each other and bickering with each other. However, they share a passionate kiss at the football game. Even Jeff of all people is touched by the emotional intimacy of the kiss, tearfully noting that it's "nothing like porn — is porn even real?" They later try to deny that they're into each other, claiming it was nothing more than a distraction — though they also clarify that they would gladly do it again if they were asked. The ending implies they might work on those hidden feelings for each other.
• Big Damn Kiss:
  • Parodied with Jeff and Josie. After Josie saves his life, Jeff tries to do a Big Damn Kiss with her. But of course, Josie is a lesbian, so she turns him down.
  • Josie and Isabel have a long intense kiss at the end on the football field after they reconcile.
• Black Comedy:
  • Mr. G disparagingly mentions a student who stopped showing up to class after a week. Josie tells him that that student committed suicide. Mr. G just scoffs, "Suuuuure he did."
  • The climactic fight between the fight club alongside the football team and the Huntington team, as most of the latter team ends up dead by the end, but the ending treats this like a heroic victory, with the school cheering the girls on, PJ and Josie realizing they just killed people for real but deciding not to think about it right now, Josie and Isabel sharing a kiss while there are dead bodies around them, and Hazel's bomb blowing up a large tree.
• "The Breakfast Club" Poster Homage: The movie poster pays homage to the poster from The Breakfast Club: Josie and PJ are in the back standing and bending their arm like Bender, Mr. G is sitting in the middle and combines the athletic gear of Andrew with Brian's cross-armed pose, and Jeff, Tim, and Hazel are all lying down, with Hazel doing the closest to Clair's hand position. They all look as bored/expressionless as in the poster it's paying homage to, especially Hazel, except for Mr. G who has more of a typical comedy poster hapless smirk on his face. Brittany and Isabel are the biggest break from the original poster layout, and are both depicted clinging to their love interests rather than following the formula of the original poster.
• Brick Joke: A twofer at the very end.
  • Hazel tries to blow up a big tree at the football game when the fight club needs to create a distraction, but it doesn't detonate, despite her best efforts. Then after the day is already saved, the Huntington team is defeated, and everyone is celebrating, the final shot of the movie (minus the snippets in the credits) is the bomb finally going off while everyone stares.
  • About halfway through the movie, after being a Butt-Monkey one time too many, the goth student decides to start plotting to blow up the school. Once the credits start rolling after the above explosion, they express frustration that someone else stole "their" plan of setting off a bomb.
  • Another twofer in the form of Sylvie's animosity towards her stepfather. The first half of the film implies that he's sexually molesting or abusing her; she finally admits the reason she hates him is that every Friday he makes the entire family watch elaborately programmed movie nights. Later, after Hazel is beaten up by the football player, we see her resting on the couch while all of the girls from fight club attend movie night.
• Chekhov's Gun: Jeff, Tim, and the other football players yell at Janice the cafeteria lady for mistakenly giving Jeff a fruit cup with pineapples in it, which he's deathly allergic to. Later, the fight club figures out that the Huntington team plans to take advantage of this allergy to kill Jeff by lacing the water in the football field's sprinkler system with pineapple juice.
• Crapsack World: It's all played for laughs, but the world the Rockbridge students live in is truly quite horrifying.
  • There's a rival school (Huntington) that assaults and murders Rockbridge students just because of their football rivalry. And even students who aren't in the football team have to fear for their lives because of Huntington.
  • Tim and Jeff trick Hazel into getting brutally assaulted in front of everyone. But everyone lets it slide because they're football players, even the faculty.
• Cringe Comedy: PJ's and Josie's first attempts to talk to their crushes near the beginning. PJ invites Brittany to get a hot dog and tries to make an innuendo about the bun, but botches it entirely, and Brittany doesn't get it and is just very confused. Meanwhile, Josie's attempts to compliment Isabel's appearance just have her saying way too many times, in way too many not-particularly-complimentary ways, how "skinny" she is, and Isabel quickly goes from looking slightly confused at first to rather insulted.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: In his ploy to expose PJ and Josie's lies, Tim tricks Hazel into publicly fighting against a member of the football team at the pep rally, who's also the best boxer at school. Hazel surprisingly holds her own for a while, knocking her opponent to the ground, punching him in the face, and even kicking his arm to the side, causing Tim's smug grin to briefly slip. But ultimately, she can't compete against her more trained opponent, and is left a beaten bloody mess, while the football player she fights only has a few cuts on his face.
• Defacement Insult: Apparently the janitor is used to painting over PJ's and Josie's lockers, which are regularly painted with insults. At the nadir of their popularity the janitor doesn't even bother.
• Delayed Explosion: The bomb Hazel attached to a tree at homecoming doesn't go off, hence why they need to find another distraction. Only after the fight club has saved the game does the tree suddenly burst into flames.
• Diagonal Billing: Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri are billed diagonally in the end credits.
• Dirty Old Man: The customers for the sexualized car wash and Isabel's used panties are old perverts. One of them has fully gray hair.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The club pulls a Toilet Paper Prank against Jeff for cheating on Isabel with Hazel's mom, but some of them are quite alarmed when Hazel escalates it by blowing up Jeff's car.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Invoked at the homecoming game. The heroes try to get the cheerleaders to make out to distract the audience and players so they can figure out how Huntington will try and kill one of their team members. Hazel and PJ end up doing it themselves, and it does sufficiently distract the crowd (and serve as an LGBT Awakening for at least one other girl).
• Enemy Mine: The girls' fight club starts to defend themselves from Jeff and his psychotic football buddies, but the girls join forces with their football team to fight the opposing team when they plan to kill Jeff.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Even the janitor Ted, who was the only person that was nice to and was close to PJ & Josie, ended up disliking what they did after they were exposed by Jeff and Tim and refused to paint their lockers after it was vandalized again.
• Everyone Has Standards: Most of the girls do not like Jeff, but when they find out he’s the target of Huntington’s murder plot, they fight the rival football team to the death to save his life.
• Fanservice Car Wash: In a scene antithetical to the club's self-proclaimed feminist goals, their pretty cheerleader members fundraise by washing cars. Isabel is also selling her dirty underwear.
• Funny Background Event: Many.
  • In a lunchroom scene, a background actor behind PJ and Josie seems to mime performing oral sex on a corndog.
  • Early on, the sight of a football player in a cage in the classroom goes unexplained. Becomes a Chekhov's Gunman when said football player is released from the cage to fight Hazel.
• Future Loser: Discussed by Josie, who describes her preferred getting-together-with-Isabel scenario thusly: Josie shows up to their Class Reunion, sees that the once-popular Jeff and Isabel are now both washed up, and sweeps Isabel off her feet.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: The fight club tries to exploit this near the end to distract the football players so that the Huntington team won't kill Jeff by having two of the cheerleaders make out. PJ ends up kissing Hazel, which gets them their distraction.
• Gossip Evolution: The night of the fair, Hazel mistakenly thinks PJ and Josie were in juvie over the summer, and Josie gently taps Jeff's knee with her car. By the next morning's history class, everyone now thinks PJ and Josie killed people in juvie and that they beat up Jeff. Even Isabel, who was there for the latter incident, thinks that.
• Hated by All: Josie & PJ were the most hated and bullied kids in school for being "gay, ugly, and untalented" until they established their self defense club and became popular. Until Jeff and Tim expose Josie & PJ by revealing that it was a ploy to get lesbian sex causing them to be hated even more to the point where even the janitor refused to paint their lockers after it was vandalized, though eventually they were able to restore their reputations by reuniting the club and beating Huntington and saving Jeff's life.
• Hilarious Outtakes: The credits are interspersed with alternate takes and bloopers from the movie.
• Hollywood Healing: PJ heals from a broken nose in a few days and Hazel walks off an absolutely brutal beating after spending a night with her friends recovering on the couch.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • After the aforementioned distraction kiss, one spectator complains about cutting the "dyke fest" so they can proceed with the football game and he can watch some "man on man grabbing."
  • PJ states that she believes that all girls are hot, not long after deeming the girls who initially joined the fight club "ugly".
• Incompatible Orientation:
  • While she doesn't seem upset at PJ kissing her, Brittany gently lets her know she is straight.
  • Played for laughs after Josie carries Jeff to safety. He does the whole "you saved me!" and tries to kiss her, but since she's very much a lesbian and also just doesn't like him as a person, she stops him with a fairly-polite-but-firm "No."
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of the Huntington football players gets run through with a sword by Sylvie.
• Ironic Echo: At the fair, PJ insists to Josie that people at school don't just judge or dislike them because they're gay, or untalented, or ugly. The next day, Principal Meyers refers to them as "the ugly, untalented gays" when calling them down to his office.
• Jerk Jock: The entire Rockbridge Falls High School football team, but especially Jeff and Tim, are deeply unpleasant, immature, and self-centered jocks who get away with their bullying actions simply because they're football players. However, the Huntington football team turns out to be far worse since they have a tendency of murdering the quarterbacks of their rival schools.
• Juvenile Hell: Invoked. Rumors begin spreading that PJ and Josie spent time in juvie over the summer. They never publicly deny these rumors as they provide notoriety, and regularly build on them by describing the "hellish treatment" they experienced, such as ritual hazing, regular gladiator-esque betting on fight clubs, and several near-death experiences.
• Karma Houdini: Tim doesn't face any comeuppance for his actions towards PJ, Josie, and the club, especially since he tricked Hazel into getting brutally beat up and no one except the fight club batted an eye.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Jeff, unlike Tim, does face consequences for some of the things he does. He's outed for cheating on Isabel and the girls then egg and TP his house for it (Hazel even blows up his car). Later, while he does win Isabel back following PJ and Josie being outed as liars, he loses her again in the ending to Josie. Though since he's not present for that, this one's more downplayed.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Occasionally employed, usually when the movie is leaning on tropes or to acknowledge production shortcomings. For example, PJ and Josie resolve their Second Act Break Up by pulling out their previously unremarked-upon friendship necklaces.
  PJ: Wow, pulling out the friendship necklace in the final hour.
• Liar Revealed: After Tim exposes the true reason PJ and Josie started the fight club, the main characters are (even more) ostracized by their classmates and have to hastily win back their respect during the third act.
• Lipstick Lesbian:
  • Maybe a lipstick bisexual since she's dating Jeff at first, but Isabel falls for a lesbian girl, Josie, and they kiss, then have sex together offscreen. She's a very feminine cheerleader who's always in blouses, skirts, has long hair and loves pink.
  • Another feminine cheerleader, Stella-Rebecca, realizes she's a lesbian near the end of the film by seeing Hazel and PJ kiss.
• Loafing in Full Costume: The football players all wear their full uniforms (sans helmets), including to class every day. Jeff is only seen out of costume immediately post-sex and when alone in his bedroom he wears a blue dressing gown.
• Maybe Ever After: After PJ and Hazel share a kiss at the football game (which is mainly as a distraction, but they both seem to enjoy it), they're seen happily chatting together at the ending and even walk together shoulder to shoulder, with the implication that they have feelings for each other and will get together; however, it's more ambiguous than Josie and Isabel, who share a kiss and hold each other in their arms.
• Meaningful Background Event: During the first classroom scene, there is randomly a muscular shirtless man in a cage in the back of the class. The camera doesn't linger on him, so the bizarreness of the setting doesn't set in unless you pay attention. Later it turns out he's a rabid football player and the best boxer in the school, shown when Tim deliberately unleashes him on Hazel.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Josie drives her car toward Jeff and just barely taps his knee with her bumper. He tumbles to the ground in agony while his fellow teammates rush to his side and act like he just got the Tonya Harding treatment.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Of the three founders of the fight club, Hazel is the nice, PJ is the mean, and Josie is the in-between. Hazel is the only one genuinely interested in creating a safe haven for the girls, and is the first to suggest getting everyone in the club to truly know each other. PJ, while she has a soft side, is selfish, manipulative, and borderline abusive to the other members of the club, being solely motivated by her pursuit of sex, and is usually dimissive of the feelings of others. Josie, while far kinder than PJ, is still predominantly motivated by her personal desires for sex, and is more than willing to lie about herself and the purpose of the club in order to get closer to Isabel.
• No Full Name Given: With the likely exception of Hazel (where even in her case, it's only due to her mother's last name being revealed), none of the students have their last names revealed in the story.
• No Sympathy: Played for Laughs. Not a single person at Rockbridge Falls remotely cares about the numerous Huntington students who were killed by the end of the film, the commentator even enthusiastically yelling at their corpses to decompose. Justified as Huntington regularly attacks and even kills students at Rockbridge Falls every so often.
• No OSHA Compliance: The Viking mascot of the school's sword is not a prop, it is in fact walking around with a dangerous weapon in school, shown when Sylvie can't pick it up properly cause it is so heavy and still impales someone with it regardless.
• Oblivious to Love: Fans have noted that, even in scenes before she breaks up with Jeff, Isabel is openly checking Josie out, and seems to like what she sees. It makes the scene where they finally do hook up even cuter, as everything from the way Isabel is acting to the incredibly low cut top she wore seems to indicate she got tired of waiting for Josie to get the message and just took matters into her own hands.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Several in rapid succession.
  • First PJ, frustrated at the idea that the club might get shut down without her accomplishing her goal of scoring with Brittany, snaps at Hazel that she has no friends and her mom's a skank, causing her to leave in tears.
  • The next day, after Tim reveals to the whole school that PJ and Josie were never really in juvie and lied about that and started the fight club with the goal of getting laid, the rest of the girls abandon them in disgust, with Isabel—who slept with Josie the night before and is the most hurt by this revelation—calling her pathetic. Mr. G, the club advisor, is also upset by this after he "tried to be an ally", and goes on a fairly misogynistic, homophobic rant at the two before storming off as well.
  • PJ and Josie then each blame each other for everything falling apart, and stop speaking while actively avoiding each other.
  • All of this is resolved once Josie learns that the Huntington team is going to kill someone on the Rockbridge team. She gets PJ to help her (and they finally hug and fully make up after the day is saved), who in turn sincerely apologizes to Hazel for everything she said and asks for her forgiveness, which is granted and makes the other girls largely forgive them both too and agree to help. They're able to win Brittany and Isabel back through fighting the Huntington team to save Jeff, with the two joining the rest of them.
• Quest for Sex: Josie and PJ have tried throughout high school to get laid but failed due to their social awkwardness. PJ uses Josie's lie about a self-defense club to create a space where they make physical contact with attractive girls, though she's disappointed how few actually attractive girls join. While Josie does succeed in hooking up with her crush, PJ does not due to Brittney's Incompatible Orientation, something Josie calls out during their Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure.
• Questionable Consent: PJ bluntly asks her clubmates who among them has been raped. No hands go up. She then clarifies that "gray-area stuff counts too". Almost everyone's hands go up.
• Police Are Useless: Stella-Rebecca mentions that she has a stalker who has threatened to kill her, but the cops refuse to do anything about it until he actually tries to.
  • Even beyond that, the movie takes place in a world where football players routinely murder students at their rival schools without repercussion.
• Poke the Poodle: Subverted. The club's idea of revenge against Jeff for cheating on Isabel is to toilet paper one tree. PJ jokes that they might get fined two dollars for it. And then Hazel blows up Jeff's car.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: PJ is confident and belligerent (red), whilst Josie is shyer and more cautious (blue). Throughout the film, PJ tends to escalate confrontations, in contrast with Josie who tries to avoid them.
  Isabel: Yeah, but you guys, like, could not be more different. She’s so, like, like… (Death Glare, choppy hand gestures) You know?
  Josie: Yeah.
  Isabel: And you’re… you’re so like… (gentle smile, wavy hand gestures) You know what I mean?
• Rescue Romance: Parodied and subverted. Josie carries Jeff off the field, away from the sprinklers that will spray pineapple juice, while the rest of the fight club battles the Huntington team. Jeff is grateful to her for saving him and attempts to kiss her in response, but she's not at all into guys, and firmly shuts him down and heads off to join her friends.
• Running Gag:
  • Mr. G looking for any excuse to vent about his divorce.
  • Josie's and PJ's lockers are repeatedly defaced with [insert insult here] #1 and [insert insult here] #2.
• Satire: Of high school sex comedies, featuring an over-the-top plot for the protagonists to score with their crushes and filled with exaggerated dialogue and scenarios.
• Save the Jerk:
  • In the fight against Huntington, Hazel saves Tim even though Tim was the one who tricked Hazel into getting brutally assaulted by a wrestler.
  • Jeff is a cheating, dumbass Jerk Jock, but they pull him off the field after learning that the Huntington football team was going to kill Jeff by spraying him with pineapple juice since he is allergic.
• Sexiness Score: PJ started the self-defense club hoping to hook up with her cheerleader crush, Brittany, and complains that they are (at first) only able to recruit "sixes".
• Serious Business: High school football. The school's football team is venerated as gods, and the rivalry they have with Huntington is taken so seriously that a player is killed every time they play. In the end the girls save Jeff from being pineapple allergy'd to death, killing several Huntington players in the process... and the school cheers them for it.
• Shout-Out:
  • Sylvie seems to think the fight club was inspired by the movie, as she tells PJ and Josie that she loves David Fincher. Later, when the club is helping Hazel recuperate with a movie night, we see a sign that says "David Fincher Movie Club".
  • Played for Laughs in one scene. While giving a speech about her time in juvie (she never actually went there), Josie is pretty much just describing the plot of The Hunger Games.
  • Josie and cheerleader Isabel are having a sweet moment in a diner, unsubtly titled But I'm a Diner. To drive it home, the camera briefly focuses on the waitress's name tag, which says "Natasha" in honor of that movie's star.
  • Rhodes tells Josie that she isn’t a “gay Yoda” that can give her the advice she wants.
  • The goth student that Tim throws the fruit cup at is clearly inspired by JD from Heathers, going so far as to write "Blow Up School" in their notebook. At the end, when Hazel's tree bomb explodes, they loudly complain "That was my thing!"
• Sistine Steal: Parodied. The footballers are so worshipped at the school that they eat lunch in a special table at the back of the cafeteria backdropped by a parody mural of Creation of Adam, with quarterback Jeff in the position of Adam and a football in the hand that is touching God's. For bonus points, they are seated only in the back half of the table facing the camera, with Jeff in the center.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Sylvie picks up a sword and prepares to wield it against a football player... then falls backwards because she has no idea how to wield a heavy metal sword.
• Suspicious Ski Mask: The club dons black ski masks when going to get revenge of Jeff for cheating on Isabel.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Jeff is first seen cheating on Isabel with Mrs. Reilly, a teacher at their school.
• Teacher's Unfavorite Student: Principal Meyers despises PJ and Josie and nearly expels them for "attacking" Jeff (in reality, Josie accidentally tapped Jeff in the kneecaps with her car bumper though the football team and Meyers play this off as intentional and a far more brutal assault than it was) and makes rather demeaning and homophobic remarks towards both of them, like explicitly calling them "the ugly, untalented gays" over the school intercom.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Parodied very heavily in this film. Most of the men worship cis, straight masculinity to ridiculous levels. The school principal even tries to punish the two main girls (Josie and PJ) for "injuring" (not really) Jeff, whom he considers America's manliest man in a long time.
• Toilet Paper Prank: The self defense club try to toilet paper Jeff's Big Fancy House, but they only really throw a few rolls on one single tree. PJ snarks that they might get fined a whole two dollars if they get caught.
• Two-Teacher School: Other than the principal, history teacher and eventual fight club sponsor Mr. G is the only teacher the characters ever interact with.
• Weaponized Allergy: The Huntington team attempts to murder Jeff by spraying the football field with pineapple juice, which he's deathly allergic to.
• We Need a Distraction: The girls in the fight club say this word-for-word at the football game to prevent it from starting so the Huntington team won't kill Jeff. Initially, Hazel attempts to bomb a tree to accomplish it, but it fails to go off. They then try to invoke Girl on Girl Is Hot with the cheerleaders, and when they won't cooperate, PJ and Hazel start making out instead, which does succeed for at least a couple of minutes.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: The team at the end of the movie wins after never playing at all because the girls have killed all the members of the Huntington team.
• World of Ham: Very few characters have an indoor voice, and those who don't scream and overreact at even the smallest of things.

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