SXSW Comedy ‘Bottoms’ Makes No Sense—That's Why It's So Wildly Brilliant

I thought I knew what high school movies were. And I thought I knew what they could be. But nothing in my storied history of clamoring for cinema’s supreme dreams of teen queens could have prepared me for Bottoms.

Audiences at SXSW were warned prior to the film’s start that it wouldn’t be what they expected. The fired-up, late-night crowd had wrapped around city blocks and across intersections, quite literally vibrating with anticipation for one of the festival’s most buzzworthy films—and for good reason! Its stars, Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, have proven themselves massive players in the indie comedy scene with only a handful of big projects under their respective belts. And the film’s director, Emma Seligman, racked up critical praise in 2020 for her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, also starring Sennott.

Whether the audience were fans of Edebiri and Sennott’s Comedy Central web series, Ayo and Rachel Are Single, or just had the best claustrophobic episode of their lives watching Shiva Baby didn’t matter. Preconceived notions are thrown out the window shortly into Seligman’s sophomore feature, which only becomes more delightfully peculiar with each passing second. Bottoms harnesses the unique strengths of all three of its main players—Sennott, Edebiri, and their director, Seligman—and puts them on a volatile, highly hormonal collision course of gonzo teen comedy, unlike anything that has ever been seen in the genre.

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