'Bottoms': Comedy is now legal at AMC
"Umm, it's giving funniest movie of 2023" - Me, in my Gen-Z era
I didnât want to like âBottomsâ. Weâve been over this so many times, most recently last week, but I am a Type 1 Contrarian who zigs when everyone zags but will get into zagging the moment everyone starts zigging. This is my gift; my curse. Who am I? Iâm Henning, man.
New York Magazine blessed âBottomsâ with a whole-ass COVER story last month, a well-reported piece that nevertheless annoyed the shit out of me for preemptively canonizing a movie opening in like four theaters its opening weekend. âFinally, the horny, bloody lesbian incel comedy weâve been waiting forâ the cover touted, first cousin to âthe [blank] we need right now.â âBottomsâ wouldnât just be funny; âBottomsâ would be TIMELY and TRANSGRESSIVE and NECESSARY.
Which â listen, I wasnât born yesterday, or even the day before yesterday. Itâs not lost on me that, especially in these apocalyptic media End Times, entertainment journalism is as much a form of entertainment marketing. Sometimes you just gotta say shit for clicks! (A click that worked, by the way, considering it got me to one of those four theaters opening weekend to see the movie.)
âBottomsâ is transgressive, but less for what it depicts on screen than what it says about a culture of moviemaking thatâs grown so timid, we think âgay female âFight Clubââ might as well be a premise for Gaspar Noe. The storyâs ultimately pretty simple: two high school seniors, desperate to hook up with their crushes before they all graduate, start a âfemale empowermentâ group (read: fight club) to win their affections. Things, as you might imagine, get out of control from there.
If you read that setup and thought âsounds a little like âSuper Badâ â youâre right! Think of Rachel Sennott (âShiva Babyâ) as the wild nâ crazy Jonah Hill-type, with Ayo Edebiri (âThe Bearâ) carrying Michael Ceraâs anxiety mantle. These broads will stop at nothing to get some! âBottomsââ DNA also includes a bit of âThe Breakfast Clubâ1, âAmerican Pieâ, early Apatow. No oneâs really breaking the teen â or teen-adjacent â comedy mold here. But thatâs also the movieâs primary strength, is the way it trades in archetypes with which weâre all already familiar and then, you know, gays âem up2. The most radical thing about âBottomsâ is just that it allows itself to be fucking funny.
For too often this past⊠letâs say decade, weâve been subjected to âcomediesâ that barely crack a joke, that seem skittish to even be making them in the first place, whose characters serve mostly as vessels for some larger sociopolitical ideology. Ideologies I usually agree with, but still!
SIDEBAR: If I really wanted to get into it here, Iâd tell you how the national decline in both religious practice and governmental confidence has resulted in Americans now looking toward entertainment as a form of moral instruction, re-casting TV/film characters as teachers we should be following, and not fallible dramatic creations (YES, Iâm talking about âTed Lassoâ. Iâm always talking about âTed Lassoâ). But I wont!
If âBottomsâ slots neatly into a queer Gen-Z neoliberal framework, itâs only as a matter of fact. Thatâs the world these characters inhabit. Thatâs the world director Emma Seligman (âShiva Babyâ) inhabits. Beyond that, Iâm not so sure the movie cares? Any statements it might be making about The World Todayâąïž are mediated through character and story, and not the other way around. Itâs sort of like â and I say this with love for both the movie AND the moment, in a vacuum â the anti-âitâs impossible to be a womanâ speech from âBarbieâ. Roast me in the comments if you must but âBarbieâ grinds to a halt as America Ferrera, an underdeveloped character, unloads a beautifully written list of very true things that, while relevant to the movie, also seems to exist entirely outside of it. The characters in âBottomsâ would have listened to that speech and kept interrupting it with fart noises, and a broken nose or two, in their own equally valid examination of modern feminism.
Most of my favorite comedies arenât actually about anything. âStep Brothersâ â thatâs just two guys goofing around, basically improv battling each other. âDumb & Dumberâ is a series of physical comedy vignettes disguised as a road trip movie. I suppose âSouth Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncutâ is about censorship, but itâs probably more about Satanâs toxic romantic relationship with Saddam Hussein.
âBottomsâ, a worthy successor to this great comedy lineage, seems proud to be dumb, to revel in the weirdness and myopia of its characters, each of whom is allowed to be as flawed â even terrible â as weâve allowed male comedy characters to be, you know, forever.
My personal hope is that weâre finally turning the corner on⊠letâs call it over-sensitivity in comedy, returning the reins to writers and performers and filmmakers who are actually funny, and not just using the concept of humor to teach us how to Be Better. We undermine comedy when we demand it also validate and/or promote a particular worldview! And we also make it harder for me and Clay to â post-strike â sell our hard-R Christmas comedy, âSleigh Queenâ. Thereâs a Santa sex scene in there that really demands a certain cultural chillness.
Maybe Iâm brain-dead, maybe âThe Breakfast Clubâ just wasnât part of my formative movie diet, but someone had to point out the poster homage to me. A real Magic Eye puzzle moment when I finally saw it
âGayâ is of course not an Insta filter but an identity, specifically one I do not share, and itâs not lost on me that a straight white elder Millennial man might be underplaying the social significance of a movie like âBottomsâ. There remain far fewer queer shows and movies than FOX News would have you think! Still, I maintain that âBottomsââ âthis story just happens to be about queer girlsâ energy is very much by design