I watched Bottoms.

Although I do not agree with the ratings, I enjoyed watching girls fight boys.

Directed and cowritten by Emma Seligman, the R rated comedy Bottoms (2023) takes place in the early 2000s (mostly made evident by the use of a Motorola flip phone) and centers on two unpopular queer best friends, PJ and Josie. Both friends start an all-girls fighting club to become popular and date the hottest girls in school, Isabel and Britanny. The movie delivers lots of jokes, well suited for a Gen Z audience, and also puts queerness on the spotlight, celebrating diversity in a fun, humorous yet absurd story. High school stereotypes fuel the jokes in the script and the world building allows for extreme situations to appear normal.

The football players dress in their sport uniforms in every scene, making fun at the overhyped glorification of school jocks by presenting these characters as divas and dramatic. The school staff displays indifference to the status quo of the student body, like the principal, or act as hippie, irresponsible, yet helpful allies, like Mr. G. In other words, none of the adults act as mature, fair, and responsible role-models; they simply add to the absurdity of the school's exaggerated and toxic environment. Overall, although the jokes are fun and the world-building feels refreshing, there isn't a balance between ridiculous characters and sensible characters, everybody behaves illogically, taking away any grounding for flaws, failures, and growth to develop within the characters.

Sometimes, I became detached from the story since a few subplots and minor characters are not entirely weaved into the story. For example, the affair between the popular quarterback, Jeff, and Hazel's mom does unfold well within the story: Why Hazel's mother? Who is Hazel's mother? Why does she matter? When the girls help Isabel get revenge on Jeff for cheating on her, the intention behind the affair gets clearer for the members of the fighting club to bond. However, they don't fight Jeff, which would have been the suited response since the girls "bond" by fighting each other and now they had reason to fight the annoying quarterback as a unified team. Instead, they try to vandalize Jeff's house (unsuccessfully), Josie tries to kiss Isabel (unsuccessfully), and Hazel manages to blow up Jeff's car. These separate and divided actions do not tie the group together but reflect the group's disconnection.

The girls' fighting club does not appear to be a unit because the story does not have them work in unison until the final scene, when they team up to save Jeff. I loved this last scene since the film cleverly flips the expectation of girls playing football when Josie carries Jeff (as a player carries the ball) while the others fight (and kill) the rival team. Football is a contact, hypermasculine, and aggressive sport, consequently the girls' fighting club stands a chance at beating (figuratively and literally) the opposing team, which also illustrates the theme of the film: girls can fight.

The film captures the disjunction between girls' strength and boys' virility to challenge the socially constructed "nature" of both genders. However, in a world of absurdity, why should this be any less absurd?