High school is where you learn everything that really matters about how our society functions. And no one ever really changes. Sex, money, popularity, clique. And when we see these characters depicted on screen, their age always seems to betray a worldview designed by minds much older. So for audiences, if you’re young it’s a social diagram, and if you’re old it’s nostalgia.
If The Breakfast Club (1985, John Hughes) is the first modern high school comedy, then Heathers (1988, Michael Lehmann) is postmodern. High school comedies aren’t about themes, nor do they carry a message. They’re all built upon class systems. And desire. Fitting in and fucking—and both of these amount to acceptance or rejection. And it’s not so much that you look at high school comedies to be new, because the characterization of a contemporary adolescent is already inherently new. You look for them to be funny. And in the end, like the characters, accept or reject who you see yourself as in life.
Bottoms (2023, Emma Seligman) is an R rated teen comedy with this perfect mix of peculiar-cute transgressive, subversive yet ultimately saccharine indie little darling of one of those movies that become an extension of a really witty comedy duo. Whatever stupid pseudo literary labels you can throw around like postmodern, surreal, magic realism, go ahead and start there, because it’s headed in the right direction to describe the way Bottoms has fun playing around with a bunch of stuff that’s usually not stuff you’d play around with.
First, Rachel Sennott being tough has to be the funniest outbursts of how effective Bottoms proves to be as a comedy. The premise is she wants to start a fight club. And once that narrative motor starts up, her character taking on this alter-ego where she’s some criminally aggressive violent alpha bent on forming her own militia of girl fighters becomes essentially why this movie is so comedically effective. I can’t get over her first speech she gives with her broken nose and black eyes. Something key here is that her character is pretending to be this badass, in much the same way the movie kind of becomes a watered down generic Marvel style fight choreography version way of pretend depicting violence; which is fine. Here, cute cartoon ultraviolence is fun in a way that Fincher explicitly stylized gnarly graphic would otherwise be just ugly disturbing.
And continuing to describe the dark comedy aspects, there are a few supporting characters who play with a variety of deranged, homicidal, criminally insane, psychopath types, yet wholly remain sweet, fun kids for us to laugh with. In Bottoms, bringing bombs to school is funny. And I’m not being sarcastic about any of this. Why can’t this stuff be funny? Bringing a bomb to school = funny. Bringing guns to school = not funny.
If Rachel Sennott kind of represents the character who does what’s wrong, who’s like way funny and everything, then morally Ayo Edebiri represents the character who does what’s right. Ayo Edebiri’s character is funny in a different way. She’s some idealized adorkable loser who does what’s right and gets rewarded for it.
What can I close with? Ever since I saw Charli XCX at South By touring for her Vroom Vroom EP, I’ve been obsessed favorite singer with her, so her music, especially the “Party 4 U” third act stuff endears me to this whole thing. And what is it about the football players and their mindless naïve solidarity with one another makes them so Heathers funny and easy to forgive? When’s the last time the character who’s supposed to be the hot girl was actually as distractingly hot as Kaia Gerber? What’s the body count in this movie? When can I see it again?
8/22/2023 Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
Corpus Christi, TX
DCP
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