Bottoms

Two gay losers set up a "fight club" at their high school for female empowerment, but really just so they can hook up with their crushes. A movie I wanted to love but can't.

I think most critics genuinely try hard to give movies a fair shake and not prejudge them. That doesn’t mean we don’t bring our own biases to the theater or form perceptions about a movie beforehand. The challenge is in working past that, seeing the movie for what it is rather than what you’d thought.

I don’t mind saying I was really looking forward to “Bottoms.” It’s billed as a boundary-pushing black comedy about two gay teens who form a “fight club” at their high school to empower females, but really it’s just a ruse to get with their crushes.

Think darkly satirical laughs with biting social commentary and not a little raunch, a la “Heathers” with some “Superbad” thrown in.

Boy, did this disappoint.

To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I wanted to hug this movie… but it kept pushing me away. It’s more off-putting than daring, more grating than caustic. And it just isn’t very funny. It winds up reinforcing many of the tropes it seeks to mock.

Director and writer Emma Seligman previously made “Shiva Baby,” which got a lot of notice on the indie circuit (but unseen by me) and also starred Rachel Sennott. Here she plays PJ, one half of a pair of “ugly untalented gays” at their school along with her best friend, Josie (Ayo Edebiri).

Being set in 2023, they’re not so much ostracized for their sexuality as ignored for not being spectacular and successful. If they were leading their own LGBTQ clique and dating lots of fabulous girls, they’d be very happy — certainly they think so. Instead, they’re miserable virgins punching the clock until college.

Oddly left unaddressed by Seligman and Sennott, who co-wrote the script, is why if they’re so desperate to have sex Josie and PJ have never hooked up. Instead, they snark and mope and talk sh*t about the cool kids, who of course they’re secretly desperate to be… or at least shtup.

Each has a crush on a cheerleader. Josie digs Brittany, the slinky and sophisticated girl played by Kaia Gerber (Cindy Crawford’s kid!), who jokes about never ingesting food without, uh, revisiting it later. PJ pines for Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), the most popular girl in school who’s dating the most popular guy, Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), the serially cheating and dimwitted captain of the football team.

Again, in a nod to the modernist frame Jeff and his henchmen don’t outwardly bully PJ and Josie, but subtly put them down and otherize them so they remain on the bottom rung of high school society. The jocks have learned to mimic the cadence of ‘inclusive’ language while still terrorizing and controlling.

The rumor going around is that PJ and Josie were in juvie prison over the summer and got into a lot of fights. Intrigued by this attention — any attention — they play it up and launch the idea of a club devoted to teaching young women how to protect themselves and feel empowered. Everyone immediately dubs it a “fight club” after the eponymous 1999 movie.

I can pinpoint for you exactly the moment when the movie lost me. After looking at the half-dozen or so girls who show up for the first meeting, PJ whines dejectedly and says to Josie, “Ohhh… these girls are all ugly!”

This is not said in an ironic way, or with any sort of self-awareness on PJ’s part. Josie does not object but assents, sharing her friend’s disappointment that no ‘hot’ girls joined. Their complaint is that only young women who like them have been devalued because of their looks or social status are available as sexual targets. They’re desperate to get laid, but not with the fat or fugly ones!

Honestly? I wanted to cry.

It’s supposed to be a funny moment but instead it’s an incredibly hurtful one. PJ and Josie know what it is to feel shame and resentment, but instead of aiming to combat the pain they use it to improve their own odds of a hookup. In that moment, they become the meanest of mean girls.

Of course, they eventually get to know the ladies better and do some sisterly bonding. (Ruby Cruz is an empathetic standout as tomboy Hazel). And of course, Brittany and Isabel eventually join the club and some amorous activity gets cooking. And Jeff and his pigskin doofuses get their (bloody) comeuppance.

The problem with “Bottoms” is that it wants to have the heft of real satirical weight but exists in a ridiculous cartoon world we don’t believe in.

Where Jeff and his stooges wear their football uniforms and pads everywhere they go. And girls beat each other to a pulp every day but parents don’t notice the bruises and broken noses. And their club supervisor is a teacher, Mr. G. (Marshawn Lynch), who lets the students do whatever they want in class while brazenly reading skin magazines and spouting misogynistic bile about his ex-wife.

This pretend world exists in contrast to the delicate one we live in, where one wrong utterance or tweet can haunt you forever. Tellingly, nobody ever whips out their phone to record the shenanigans.

Because we don’t for a minute buy this backdrop, PJ and Josie’s tormentors are non-threatening and goofy. (The secret to a good comedic villain is they actually have power but wield it in an incompetent or funny way.) Neither their challenges or the solutions they come up with seem credible.

And their sex mission isn’t empowering but deeply creepy.

Edebiri and Sennott have plenty of screen charm, with Josie the mumbling worrywart and BJ the overconfident schemer. But given this screenplay and tone, I never felt bonded to their characters. I didn’t root for them. Their troubles seem largely self-created.

“Bottoms” is the story of two young women who want what we all do: to be seen, accepted and loved. Instead of elevating themselves, they scrape the barrel.