Bottoms movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert (2024)

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Bottoms movie review & film summary (2023) | Roger Ebert? ›

“Bottoms” dropkicks John Hughes movies on their ass and lets the girls take charge—not just as pouty wallflowers or broody misfits until someone gives them a makeover. They are the weirdos; they are the nerds. They have every right to fail, be crass, make crude jokes, and shed blood.

Unpopular best friends PJ and Josie start a high school fight club to meet girls and lose their virginity. They soon find themselves in over their heads when the most popular students start beating each other up in the name of self-defense.

Bottoms / Film synopsis

Despite its heavily satirical tone, “Bottoms” doesn't come across as needlessly edgy, or meaningless. The portrayal of toxic masculinity, misogyny, hom*ophobia, and other social ills, for some is cathartic; a way to laugh at things they've experienced.

Heartwarming and hilarious, Bottoms updates teen movie tropes with a comedy that'll leave you in stitches if you can handle raunchy humor.

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 murder plot and calls to celebrate the club for saving Jeff. Josie and Isabel embrace with a kiss. The tree bomb finally explodes, interrupting the celebration.

Bottoms was set to be a blockbuster hit from the beginning. With a budget of $11.3 million, the film grossed $1.3 million by its first weekend. Bottoms boasts a score of 93% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, as well as a 90% Audience Score.

Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine)

Jeff is the quarterback on the Vikings football team, but we don't get to see him in too much action other than his horrendous behavior toward PJ, Josie and even at times his girlfriend. Key fact, Jeff is allergic to pineapple juice.

PJ and Josie are sleazy! They hatch a plan to date cheerleaders! In the first 15 minutes of the film, they convince the whole school that they're “qualified” to run a fight club because they spent their summers in a Hunger Games-style survival situation in juvie (plot twist: they did not go to juvie).

Parents need to know that Bottoms is a raunchy comedy about two lesbian high school girls who start a fight club as a way to get their crushes' attention (and possibly sex). Violence, while played for laughs, is surprisingly bloody.

Small-town bartender Owen Peadman goes to Los Angeles to raise money to help save his father's Minnesota restaurant. He tries to find a way into Hollywood society, where he meets socialite Lisa and her uptight actor boyfriend. Can he balance his growing feelings for Lisa with surviving the sordid lifestyles of the Hollywood elite?

Bottoms Up / Film synopsis

Why is Bottoms rated R? ›

Characters joke about sexual assault. hom*ophobia is joked about. Sexual Content: There is frequent talk about sex in general and lesbian sex in specific, often with some detail about sexual acts or anatomy. A couple is heard having sex off-screen.

This is a teen/lesbian comedy. Rachel and Ayo are two high school lesbian teenagers that want to have sex before they graduate but they are not very popular girls, so they decide to start an all girls fight club under the pretense of women learning self defense.

Bottoms. The female dominated film, lead by Rachel Sennot and The Bear's Ayo Edebir, held all of its production throughout locations in New Orleans. Bottoms is a comedy that follows two unpopular high school girls, who create a fight club in order to meet new girls.

PJ tries to make a move on Brittany but is disappointed to find out Brittany is straight. Meanwhile, Josie and Isabel get to have a romantic night together. Things are going great for Josie, while PJ is trying to accept what has happened. It is not until the school's pepper ally that certain secrets come to light.

At one point, a throwaway line references that it has been 20 years since the last big game between the rivals. In discussing that two-decade-old game, another character mentions that it unfolded back in 2003. That said, the present storyline of Bottoms is seemingly set in 2023 — the same year Bottoms was released.

When they reach the game, PJ and Hazel realise they need to divert everyone's attention in order to get Jeff rescued and the two kiss, with it implied that this sparks a romance.

Bottoms is about two gay teen girls and bickering best friends who want to get some sexual experience and it all plays like a moderately scuffed-up and entirely non-heterosexual version of Olivia Wilde's Booksmart – though no one in this film shows the smallest interest in books, certainly not the teachers.

PJ and Josie are sleazy! They hatch a plan to date cheerleaders! In the first 15 minutes of the film, they convince the whole school that they're “qualified” to run a fight club because they spent their summers in a Hunger Games-style survival situation in juvie (plot twist: they did not go to juvie).

In the film's final moments, Isabel tells Josie she could've tried talking to her instead of forming a fight club to impress her. "I'm not actually sure that's true," Josie says before the two kiss, cementing their relationship.

Let's get that controversial name out of the way first. No, the new comedy Bottoms is not a gay X-rated film. The title here instead refers to a pair of teenagers at the bottom of the social totem pole seeking to climb to the top.