If this makes you think of the quirkier or edgier high school comedies like Booksmart or Heathers you're close but not quite there. Bottoms is reminiscent of those and more but its tougher cartoony approach takes it way out of that area. While it observes the three act arc of conventional narrative it also allows an unsettling imbalance to thrive which ensures that as soon as something gets too familiar there will be something to pull the rug on it.
This is a school run by a principal whose stake in the team quarterback lies somewhere between an eye for future funding and pagan idolatry, and the football teams only wear their football gear. In warning the school on the PA about the advent of the feared Huntington team he gets a girl to deliver a testimony about how she was cornered by a Huntington player one night. The account is delivered flat, like an alpha girl getting out of detention and ends with, "and now I'm fucked!" Characters react with identical complex lines that would be impossible in real life but they also respond to other situations realistically and without wisecracks. The sense that the chaos is only just likely to rebalance itself is palpable.
However, this keeps the cuteness in check with grimmer moods and material. In a script that has more throwaway one-liners than a week of Tina Fey's dreams there is a surprising level of sobering material on abuse and even rape. As a film that is undeniably a black comedy it keeps the easy charm of girls playing tough vulnerable to bruising. In a South Park way, the final act triumph (not saying how) serves both the satire-lover's thirst for punchy retribution and the comedy audience's need for brightness.
Good writing needs good playing. Rachel Sennot and Ay Edeberi as PJ and Josie respectively provide a core of two life long friends with real chemistry. If you saw Sennot in Bodies Bodies Bodies, she's even faster talking and more solidly grotesque here. Ruby Cruz as an uncharacteristically developed quirky character kept reminding me of Meg Tilly whom she resembles physically but also behaviourally. Nicholas Galitzine as the team QB surprises with his miasmic mix of machismo and prissy self-absorption. Really, the whole cast brings it.
With new things to say within the niche but well loved sub-genre and a very deft hand that steers between light and tough nimbly, Bottoms is one of the very best comedies I've seen in years. It's dizzying but committed. How dizzying, how committed? Well, I was a young adult in the early '80s and hated the Song Total Eclipse of the Heart more than any other musical statement of the time. It's used here in a way that is belly laugh funny and also culturally vengeful. Bottoms is a film of extremes and contrasting extremes. It is a chaos given form by the most moreish icing you've tasted since childhood. Dig the fuck in!
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