Bottoms

A seriously, pervasively annoying piece of work, Bottoms follows two high schoolers (Rachel Sennott’s PJ and Ayo Edebiri’s Josie) as they start a fight club in an effort at meeting potential girlfriends. Filmmaker Emma Seligman, armed with her and Sennott’s screenplay, delivers a wildly over-the-top comedy that establishes a grating, obnoxious tone right from the get-go, with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by Seligman’s frustratingly broad approach to virtually every single of the movie’s attributes – which includes jokes and gags of a desperately unfunny (and far-from-subtle) nature and several eye-rollingly larger-than-life performances. (Sennott and Edebiri are especially guilty of the latter, thus ensuring that their respective characters remain completely unsympathetic and uninvolving throughout.) It’s not surprising, consequently, to discover that one’s efforts at working up the slightest bit of interest in any of this falls flat on a continual basis, while the eventual (and perhaps inevitable) inclusion of melodramatic, heartfelt moments are hardly able to pack the emotional punch for which Seligman is obviously aiming (ie these are all just one-dimensional caricatures, ultimately). By the time the interminable and aggressively off-kilter finale rolls around, Bottoms has cemented its place as a complete misfire that fails in just about every way imaginable.

1/2* out of ****