Bottoms ★★★½

SATIRE is one of the most difficult forms of comedy.

And when it’s as disguised as is the case with the 2023 American release Bottoms, it can be missed or, worse still, misunderstood.

The humour in Bottoms appears quite broad on the surface but, look underneath and there is a lot going on that sends up the gross-out sex comedy sub-genre while questioning societal perceptions of women and the labels we place on many kinds of people.

It’s directed by Emma Seligman, who co-wrote it with Rachel Sennott who also plays the lead role. They are the duo whose first feature collaboration, Shiva Baby from 2021, was also highly regarded.

In a complete subversion of films like American Pie or Revenge of the Nerds, Sennott and Ayo Edebiri play two gay high school seniors who start a female self-defence class in order to hook up with the cheerleaders they have crushes on.

The girls are able to do this because they return after the summer to false rumours that they were in juvenile detention and also cause an injury to the school’s popular football quarterback.

Threatened with expulsion, they convince the gormless headmaster they were practising to teach other female students how to defend themselves on campus.

PJ (Sennott) takes her role way too seriously from the outset and this eventually infects the others with the ‘feminist fight club’ leading to multiple injuries and a vicious mean streak among the participants.

It all culminates in a showdown with the school’s self-appointed student elite at a football match.

It’s crass and very politically incorrect, but constantly entertaining and laugh out loud on many occasions.

One of the comedies of the year.