Flasz On Film

I can honestly imagine that in the aftermath of the release of Shiva Baby, which garnered significant critical acclaim despite not really earning much in box office receipts, Emma Seligman (who directed and wrote it) got together with her star Rachel Sennott and conspired to make another movie almost immediately. They probably sat down and began throwing out ideas for cool stories they could tell until they landed on a what-if-we-did-a-teen-sex-comedy island, which is where their pupils widened as they both sat up in excitement. 

“This would be totally rad!”, I imagine Seligman reacting to Sennott’s suggestion. Somehow, in my head it is Rachel Sennott who took charge and brought the original idea to the table. 

“I know, right?” Rachel confirms while extending her arm semi-aggressively, her palm facing up. “But we won’t do a regular teen sex comedy. Ours is going to be hella better than anything you’ve seen!” 

“Yeah, imagine Revenge of the Nerds meets The Breakfast Club… but fully female-centric.” 

“But we have to make it cool,” says Rachel. “Let’s do a Revenge of the Nerds meets Fight Club.” 

 “Awesome!” Emma exclaimed. And thus, they began writing their teen sex comedy updated to 2023 by toning down whatever toxic male energy teen sex comedies would typically endorse and replacing it with stuff the current generation would find more relatable.  

At least, this is how I imagine the ideation process may have occurred and how it more or less precipitated into the script of what later became Bottoms – a contemporary play on the perennial teen sex comedy about two queer teenagers (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri) who start an afterschool fight club. Under the premise of creating a safe space for females to learn self-defence, they forge a sneaky plan to get close to two hot girls they have a crush on, and in doing so, they also end up upsetting the football-domineering status quo of jocks being treated like kings at school. Oh, and there’s also some kind of a terrorist plot involving pineapples, allergies and murder.  

Look, we must face it. Nobody in their right mind would ever imagine a teen sex comedy making a lot of sense or attempting to do anything poignant. From Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds to American Pie and Superbad, this microgenre has realistically had one primary mission – to entertain, poke fun and probe the boundaries of good taste… by crossing them. That’s what you sign up for: a movie that is a bit inappropriate, a bit stupid and kind of universally relatable despite being typically geared toward North American audiences, whose high school experiences it would traditionally reflect. However, unless you live in Iran or something, I can easily expect that teenage experiences are not too dissimilar, regardless of where you’re from. After all, teenage existence is primarily defined by your sexual awakening (and all the hubbub surrounding it), finding your tribe and figuring out what you want to do when you leave high school.  

Therefore, there’s definitely an audience for Bottoms somewhere out there. Sadly, I don’t see myself as a member of this esteemed group because Emma Seligman’s newest film did absolute bupkis for me. However, based on how sections of the audience I was with (and it was a reasonably busy screening too) was reacting to what they were seeing, I think it might have been me who was the problem.  

So, maybe don’t take those two stars you see displayed above this text on face value, because chances are you might like this movie more than I did… assuming you fall into a specific sub-demographic. The reason I am making this stipulation is a product of my own observations as to which teen sex comedies I tend to resonate with the most, which indicates there is a strong correlation between your own age and when the movie is made. I never cared about Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Teen Wolf, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Revenge of the Nerds. But I did like American Pie and Superbad. Is it perhaps because the kind of humour and cultural nuances explored in those films I found a bit easier to identify with? Maybe. I cannot discount this possibility. Consequently, I can only imagine that I am not at all attuned to what Bottoms is trying to sell me, as I simply don’t respond to Seligman and Sennott’s sense of humour as much as I would respond to movies either portraying or made by people who might be roughly my age. Maybe if you are a current twentysomething, you’ll find this movie’s exploits hilarious and respond with uproarious laughter to its cringy deadpan outrageousness I found utterly stupefying.  

Take it or leave it.  

What I can say is that based on my own experience of watching current twentysomethings pretending to be teenagers was not the same as it was when I was such a twentysomething watching my own peers re-enact their own teenage woes, with which I had a closer connection. I suppose I should count it as a knock against the movie that it simply fails to radiate a more general appeal (which is why Booksmart worked so much better… and even Seligman’s own debut, come to think of it), but at the same time Bottoms simply falls neatly into the parameters of a teen sex comedy, which is all it ever wanted to be in the first place. So, if you are in the appropriate age range for it, go nuts. If not, you’re statistically less likely to enjoy what Bottoms has on offer. In fact, if you don’t resonate with the movie, you may exit the screening completely downtrodden and fogged up with thoughts of your own mortality because this movie could aid your own realization that you’ve matured enough to lose what you thought was a cultural connection to people who are quite a bit younger than you.  

For all I care, there is no point in chastising the movie for being formulaic or for its jokes not landing the way they should… You must make up your own mind about it because – as Emma Seligman and friends may have illuminated to me – I’m now an old fart and I just don’t jive particularly well with the kind of caustic wit this movie is teeming with. It turns out I may have developed a sophisticated enough taste to demand my caustic wit to be of a very narrow vintage. But I’m sure it’s lovely if your palate is young and supple enough.