Bottoms

 Bottoms is one of those teen comedies where a lie gets away and takes a life of its own and then it's revealed as a lie and the people who told it need to deal with the fallout and blah blah blah - you know the deal, that old shitty chestnut.
 It's a hoary, hackneyed plot structure, but the specifics of it can elevate it;  These formula movies are only as good as the jokes they deploy. So credit Emma Seligman (who also directs) and Rachel Sennot (who also stars) for a very silly script that's got just enough off-beat, funny jokes to make the plot engaging, and is often willing to take them just a little bit further than expected.

 PJ (Rachel Sennot) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are two life-long lesbian friends and social outcasts who decide that this... whatever year it is of high school is the one where they'll propose to their way-out-of-their-league crushes (Havana Rose liu and Kaia Gerber; both cheerleaders, of course). PJ and Josie's dynamic is a little similar to the one shared by the protagonists in Booksmart - with PJ the amoral motormouth who drags nerdier, saner Josie (also a bit of a motormouth) into her schemes - but this is a far, far sillier movie, one that's more interested in absurdist humor and skewing teen movie tropes.
 So after an incident where the girls (barely) hurt the school's star football player (a very funny Nicholas Galitzine), they become even less popular... until PJ hits on the idea of founding a self-defense club for women. She does it as a way to maybe wrestle with hot girls, but the club takes on a life of its own and inspires the other girls who join it. Also taking on a life of its own: a lie the girls encourage to get respect about having been to Juvie and being forced into fights to the death while there. See the first paragraph for the general arc of that plot.

 It's a feminist movie, of course, but gently so - and it gets some good jokes at its expense, especially about just how clueless everyone is about feminism; When PJ fakes being a feminist while talking up the club, Josie tells her off, by pointing out her favorite show is Entourage. Later a black girl, upon learning the that the club was founded by the girls to get some cooch, is pissed off because "It's the second wave all over again."

 When it works it's got a great energy going for it; Sennot and Edebiri are extremely funny together, there are lots of great ideas and characters peppered throughout, and things do get unexpectedly violent to great comedic effect. But the formulaic plot drags it down - the last thing I care about in a movie like this is whether the girl gets the girl, and I absolutely don't want to see a sad musical montage. I felt like there was a little too much attention wasted on the particulars of its inane plot, but then again at least it gets a lot of mileage when it decides to subvert it.
 I got the sense that there's about forty-five minutes' worth of jokes, stretched out to ninety. Luckily there are some very good jokes in there.

 And while I do have complaints (because of course I do!), I still liked it a lot - it's a pretty unique movie, one that lovingly lampoons Heathers and is sincere about finding a shared space, even if it's within a club that was originally founded to try and get some action.