10 Teen Movies That Are Smarter Than You Think

Emma Seligman’s Bottoms is the teen movie we didn’t know we needed, until we did. It’s an absurdist satire on the very concept of teen movies, paying homage to the entire canon, from in-the-know films like Heathers, Election, and Easy A, to the more bare-faced, straightforward teen movies like She's All That and Bring It On, and it’s better than all of them.

Deeply unpopular best pals PJ and Josie (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri) occupy a precarious social position at the football-obsessed Rockbridge Falls High, compounded by their lowly status as virgins. Seeking the approval and romantic reciprocation of the cheerleaders, the pair lean into their suddenly (and mistakenly) acquired bad girl images and form a fight club, widening the gender gap between their contemporaries.

Bottoms expands, exaggerates, and subverts an array of typical teen narrative tropes, including the sexy car wash, the prank, and the virgin pact, as well as more meta-level tropes like, for example, the cast playing way below their age range, calling attention to the fact that teen movies often cast people in their 20s as high schoolers.

Though the film amplifies and examines the stereotypes used in teen movies, it maintains its own fiction throughout. This isn’t Not Another Teen Movie or Scary Movie, and it is not winking down the camera lens and stepping outside the frame of its own fiction. The world is fully occupied by Bottoms' characters; it’s just that that world, as in most teen comedies, doesn’t make sense.