10 'WTF Did I Just Pay To See' Movies

The US high school movie is as essential to the mainstream film landscape as the suburban satire, providing an array of tropes that are recognised the world over. These are the dumb, brash, handsome jocks; the woebegone nerds who want nothing more than to score with the hot girls; or, indeed, the popular girls themselves - often cheerleaders, always plastic. Bottoms has all of this, just not as we know it.

While paying tribute to nineties and noughties high school hits like Clueless (1995), Bring It On (2000) and Sugar & Spice (2001), Emma Seligman's wacky comedy manages to mix its influences with rocket fuel and go deep diving in the uncanny valley.

Things start off simple enough: A couple of loser best friends set out to catch the cheerleaders' attention and lose their virginity before their senior year is out. But this is to American Pie (1999) what Buckethead is to John Mayer. 

This is because those two friends are PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edibiri); their high school is a place where classes last five minutes, sports matches are all-out war, cheerleading is a wet t-shirt contest and pranking is a car bomb; and in order to score the hotties they form an after-school fight club.

Given Bottoms advertised itself as "From the Producers of Pitch Perfect and Cocaine Bear", we should have guessed where this was going.