Bottoms premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2023, and was released in the United States on August 25, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures. The film received positive reviews from critics.
Plot
PJ and Josie are unpopular lesbian best friends at Rockbridge Falls High School who have never had sex. Josie and PJ pine for popular cheerleaders Isabel and Brittany, respectively. At the beginning of their school year, PJ and Josie, joined by their friend Hazel, attend the local fair, where they witness Isabel and her boyfriend Jeff, the quarterback of the Rockbridge Falls Vikings, having an argument. Isabel gets into PJ and Josie's car, and they softly bump Jeff's knees when he refuses to move out of the way. Jeff falls to the ground, feigning severe injury.
When school starts, rumors spread that PJ and Josie were in juvie over the summer and that the girls had physically fought Jeff. When Principal Meyers threatens them with expulsion, Josie lies that they were simply practicing for a feminist "self-defense club". PJ and Josie decide to actually set up the self-defense club in the name of female empowerment with Hazel's help, though they secretly want to use it to get attractive girls to have sex with them. They ask Mr. G, a careless and disinterested history teacher currently going through a divorce, to be their advisor since they assume he won't show up for the club meetings, though he does anyway. He attempts to shut the club down after seeing how violent it is, but PJ and Josie manage to convince him that it's about female empowerment and he changes his mind, growing more interested in feminism as a result.
The club grows closer through their chaotic and violent practice, while PJ and Josie continue their lie about having been to juvie. Jeff's overprotective best friend Tim, a fellow Vikings player, suspects that PJ and Josie never went to juvie and calls local juvenile halls to confirm that there was no record of them having gone. Hazel discovers that her mother is having an affair with Jeff. Josie tells Isabel, and Isabel breaks up with Jeff in front of the student body in the cafeteria. The club decide to vandalize Jeff's house with eggs and toilet paper, though Hazel builds a bomb that blows up his car. Tim suspects the club is involved, and all of the club members except for PJ accept that the club will end as Principal Meyers will believe anything Jeff and Tim say. Faced with the club's disbandment, PJ and Hazel bicker, and PJ humiliates Hazel for being a loner. Tim watches from outside and calls out towards Hazel as she storms away crying. The following evening, Josie invites Isabel to her room and they have sex. Meanwhile, PJ kisses Brittany, but Brittany informs her that she is straight.
At the pep rally for the upcoming football game against longtime rival Huntington High School, Tim calls on Hazel to represent the club by fighting the school's top boxer in combat. Hazel manages to hold her own for a while, but ultimately loses the fight and is severely injured. Tim reveals the lies behind PJ and Josie's "fight club" and time in juvie, publicly humiliating them in retaliation for taking attention away from the football team and "injuring" Jeff. PJ and Josie argue over who was responsible for the club and fall out, and the two are ostracized at school, even being told off by Mr. G, who renounces feminism and goes back to his old chauvinistic ways.
Josie seeks advice from her childhood babysitter Rhodes, who reveals that per tradition, Huntington intends to kill a Rockbridge football player at the upcoming game. Hoping to prevent this, PJ and Josie rekindle their friendship, and then make up with Hazel and the rest of the girls in the club, though they are unable to recruit Isabel and Brittany. They realize Huntington High has tied several large barrels of pineapple juice into the football field's sprinkler system to kill Jeff, who is deathly allergic to pineapple.
Hazel tries to distract the audience by blowing up a tree, but the bomb fails. She and PJ manage to divert everyone's attention by publicly making out. Upon the arrival of Huntington High's team, Isabel and Brittany rejoin the club and a brutal, bloody brawl ensues between the players and the fight club. Josie heroically carries Jeff off the football field to safety and falls on top of him afterwards. Jeff attempts to kiss her, but Josie immediately rebuffs him. The players are beaten by the girls and several of them are killed. The sprinklers go off and Tim tastes the pineapple juice, realizing the plot to murder Jeff and calls to celebrate the club for saving Jeff. Josie and Isabel embrace with a kiss. The tree bomb finally explodes, interrupting the celebration.
In April 2021, it was announced that Seligman and Sennott were working with Orion Pictures and Brownstone Productions, with Elizabeth Banks, Max Handelman, and Alison Small producing for Brownstone, and Alana Mayo producing for Orion. It is the third collaboration between Seligman and Sennott after the 2018 short film Shiva Baby and her 2020 feature-length adaptation.[6] Whilst promoting that film, Seligman described her next project as a "campy queer high school comedy in the vein of Wet Hot American Summer but more for a Gen-Z queer audience".[7]
In April 2022, it was announced that Ayo Edebiri, Marshawn Lynch, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Dagmara Domińczyk and Punkie Johnson were added to the cast.[8][9] Filming was scheduled to take place in New Orleans between April 18 and May 27, 2022.[10] Seligman has said that she cast Marshawn Lynch at the suggestion of Mayo, who pointed her to his appearance on the Netflix series Murderville, the majority of which he had improvised.[11] On September 12, 2022, it was confirmed by The New York Times that filming had wrapped. Sennott described the film as, "Two girls in a classic American football town who start a fight club under the guise of female empowerment, but it's actually so they can have sex with cheerleaders".[12]
Seligman faced significant difficulties during the processes of pitching, shooting and editing Bottoms, the bulk of which were due to the potentially alienating nature of the film's overtly sexual, lesbian premise. She and Sennott received a number of rejections while introducing the concept to various studios, and often were not even permitted to properly pitch their idea to executives. Additionally, several companies declined to feature their products in the film due to its supposedly "offensive" content. Once their project was accepted by Orion, they were nearly unable to find high school campuses in New Orleans that were willing to lend their space; Seligman had to resort to shooting mostly in an abandoned elementary school and a college gymnasium. The initial drafts of the script included scenes of PJ and Josie being sent to a "militaristic boot camp" for "horny girls", where Punkie Johnson's character would've been introduced as head of the camp; however, these scenes were removed due to poor reception at test screenings.[13][14]
Bottoms premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2023.[17] The film was given a limited theatrical release in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 25, 2023, before expanding to additional screens on September 1, 2023. It was also released theatrically in Canada on the same day.[18] The film was released in the US and Canada on Amazon Prime Video on September 22.[19]
Warner Bros. Pictures released the film in 405 theaters across in the United Kingdom and Ireland on November 3, 2023,[20] and in Australia and New Zealand on November 30.[21]
Reception
Box office
Bottoms opened in limited release at ten theaters in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin, grossing $461,052 in its opening weekend, a per-venue average of $46,105.[22] It was the highest per-screen average on ten or more screens since Everything Everywhere All at Once (April 2022).[23][24] The film expanded to 715 theaters in its second weekend, making $3 million, and a total of $3.58 million over the four-day Labor Day frame.[25] Expanding to 1,265 theaters in its third weekend, the film made $2 million, finishing in 10th.[26]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 212 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Propulsive and over-the-top, Bottoms is an instant high school comedy classic that feels both current and nostalgic."[27]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[28] Audiences polled by PostTrak gave the film a 93% positive score, with women under 25 giving it 98% score and 96% saying they would definitely recommend it.[29]
Reviewing the film for Variety, following its premiere at South by Southwest, Owen Gleiberman commended the direction and screenplay (particularly its characters and humor), stating: "Bottoms is unlike any high-school comedy you've ever seen. It's a satire of victimization, a satire of violence, and a satire of itself. It walks a tightrope between sensitivity and insanity (with a knowing bit of inanity), and it's full of moments that are defiantly what we once used to call incorrect".[30] Valerie Complex of Deadline Hollywood admired the lead performances and Seligman's direction, but found some faults with the screenplay, ultimately concluding: "Bottoms is fun, but with some slight tweaks this could have been an epic exploration of the gray areas of queerness and what it means to stand in the center of that as an adolescent".[31] Referring to the film as the "horniest, bloodiest high school movie of the 21st century" in a highly enthusiastic review for Rolling Stone, David Fear lauded every aspect of the film, including its direction, screenplay and cast performances.[32]
