Emma Seligman’s second feature film “Bottoms” is decidedly outrageous for laughs, and I enjoyed that. As a high school comedy movie, it is often blatantly artificial in terms of mood and details, but it literally does not pull any punch or kick for its broad but barbed comic situations coupled with some violence, and you will not wince that much even when it gleefully throws extra blood and violence during its climatic parts.

Rachel Sennot, who previously collaborated with Seligman in Seligman’s impressive first film “Shiva Baby” (2020), and Ayo Edebiri, a promising actress who recently received an Emmy nomination for her solid supporting turn in acclaimed TV comedy series “The Bear”, play PJ and Josie, two different lesbian high school girls who have been each other’s best friend. Both of them want to have their first sex before their upcoming graduation, but, alas, neither of them has any luck in attracting any female student in the school, and PJ is particularly frustrated as carrying a torch for a pretty cheerleader girl named Brittany (Kaia Gerber).

Anyway, PJ and Josie later get themselves in a little trouble in another cheerleader girl named Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and her current boyfriend Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), who is incidentally one of the more popular football players in their high school. He and several other football players are quite arrogant and confident to say the least, and they always wear their uniform even when they are not training or playing.

For avoiding getting pushed for their trouble, PJ and Josie tell a little lie to the school principal, and that is the beginning of their little fight club for female students. On the surface, they are supposed to teach her fellow female students on how to not only defend themselves but also fight against those dangerous male students from the arch-rival school of theirs, but they do not know anything about that from the beginning, so there comes another little lie from them for making their club members believe that they had a fair share of experience with fighting.

The main reason why Josie and PJ keep going along with their lies is getting more attention from those pretty cheerleaders including Brittany and Isabel. During the first several days of their club, there only come a bunch of girls as unpopular as them, but, what do you know, Brittany and Isabel soon come to show interest in joining the club, and it goes without saying that PJ loves every moment when she happens to have a fight with Brittany on the gym floor, though Brittany still does not have any idea on how PJ comes to yearn more for her.

Meanwhile, PJ and Josie need an adult to support and supervise their little fight club, and that person in question is a teacher nicknamed Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch), who has no idea on what PJ and Josie are doing along with other girls in the club. He simply agrees to be the adult supervisor of the club without much thought, and he also does not show much concern at all even when he comes to the club for his perfunctory supervision. Nevertheless, he gradually becomes a fixture in the club as time goes by, and he has one short but hilarious moment when he joins a support meeting for PJ and Josie and several other club members.

Of course, it does not take much time for the girls to come to have a big conflict with Jeff and other football players in the high school, who do not welcome much the changes brought by PJ and Josie especially after Isabel breaks up with Jeff due to his very inappropriate relationship with a certain adult woman in his neighborhood. In addition, the mood in the school becomes more tense as a big football match with the football team of that arch-rival school is getting closer, and we are not so surprised when it turns out later that there has been a long bad history between these two high school football teams.

The screenplay by Seligman and Sennott cheerfully bounces from one funny moment to another while also showing some affection toward some of its main characters. When Josie subsequently finds herself really falling in love with one of the cheerleader girls, the movie handles their little private moment with enough care and sensitivity, and Josie becomes more conflicted about what she and PJ have been doing. In case of Josie and PJ’s rather flawed relationship with a tomboy girl named Hazel (Ruby Cruz), Josie and PJ come to realize how valuable Hazel’s friendship has been to them, and it is both funny and poignant when these three girls band together along with several other girls for saving the day during the climax sequence of the film.

While Sennott and Edebiri steadily function as the main source of humor and drama, several other cast members of the film have each own moment to shine. While Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, and Kaia Gerber are well-cast in their respective supporting roles, Nicholas Galitzine and Miles Fowler are effective as the mean boy characters of the story, and Marshawn Lynch, who has been mostly known for his professional athletic career, simply occupies the screen as much as required.

Overall, “Bottoms” confirms to us that Seligman is a talented filmmaker to watch as shown from her previous film. Although it is less sharp and acerbic compared to the hilariously nightmarish black comedy of “Shiva Baby”, the movie has enough funny moments to be savored, so I recommend you to give it a chance someday.