BEFORE: I'm still feeling the effects of this cold, I slept until noon on Sunday, so it's a really good thing that I called in sick the day before - as I never would have made it to the theater by 9 am. Not in any condition to work, anyway, so this is a good thing, to have another day of recovery. I took some NyQuil that expired years ago, that probably was not a good idea, because it led me to have some frantic fever dreams - although it did allow me to continue sleeping through them. Today I'll take a hot shower and keep hitting the coffee and soup, we'll see how that goes. But also today I simply HAVE to figure out the path to Easter, I'm on a time limit because the Liam Neeson chain starts very soon, and I need to figure out where it should end. So my mind's not working great right now, but some linking plans need to happen.
Dagmara Dominczyk carries over again from "The Assistant" and Happy (?) Daylight Savings Time, I hope you got to sleep through it, and try to enjoy living one hour in the future for the next few months. You know, I don't care about tariffs or federal layoffs or even stealing the gold from Fort Knox, I would just love to see the President abolish this horrible practice of changing the clocks. If he accomplishes just ONE thing positive during his second administration, I would want it to be that. It would save the government money, and he claims that's what he and VP Musk are trying to do, so, come on, make it happen.
THE PLOT: Two unpopular queer high-school students start a fight club to have sex before graduation.
AFTER: It's another high-school film, which means it's going to take the same elements we see in EVERY high-school film - football players, cheerleaders, teachers, nerds, goths, gay kids, freaks and one principal - and try to mash them together in a way no other film has done before. This one may actually be successful on that front, there sure isn't another recent high-school film like THIS one, with a couple lesbians trying to make out with cheerleaders, who they think are out of their league. If anything, this reminds me an older film called "Heathers", which kind of put the same elements together in a different way - the mean girls, the bad boy, the football team, and the kid who wants to blow up the school. Back then a teen being gay was kind of looked at as a negative, or scandalous at least, like people didn't fully understand it, but you'd think we've come a long way since then, and well, maybe. Or maybe not.
My initial problem with the premise is that there are two lesbian teens and they can't find anyone else in their school to have sex with. Perhaps I don't understand the problem from their perspective, and I don't mean to belittle their struggle in any way, but why can't they just have sex with each other? Are they missing the easiest solution, or am I misunderstanding the problem? Sure, they're friends, but are they not attracted to each other? Are they afraid of ruining their friendship by letting sex get in the way? Or did they put each other in the friend-zone and they can't get out of it? Or are they both looking to recruit straight girls over to their team, because that's so much hotter, like the forbidden fruit? Maybe they're both being ambitious and trying to play on a higher level, like they've placed cheerleaders on some kind of pedestal or something, but cheerleaders are just people, you just need to talk to them and understand them and give them your time, but both PJ and Josie are unable to even break the ice with them. Well, your lesbian friend is right there next to you, I'm not seeing the problem.
Maybe the title of the film is a clue, because we all know there are "Tops" and "Bottoms", without being too crude about it, it's code for some people being dominant and taking charge, sexually. Though the film is called "Bottoms", representing the main characters' place on the social ladder, perhaps in bed they both want to be "Tops", and thus their relationship couldn't work (still, why not TRY?) and they feel they'd be better off seeking out some "Bottoms" to have relationships with. Again, not an expert on this, just putting some theories out there.
But I also get the feeling this just isn't a film that wants to be taken seriously. Many elements are so far out there, so over-exaggerated that maybe everything's a joke, nothing is real, and they all know it. So the characters are allowed to act in ways that would NEVER happen in a real-life school, not without parents and teachers freaking out over things, getting involved and trying to over-regulate everything and shut activities down if they got out of hand. So a fight club for girls in a high-school? Yeah, that's never going to happen. They pitch it to the principal as a "self-defense" class for girls, and apparently there's a rival football team from the next town over that has tried to injure Rockbridge Falls' quarterback in years past, and some girls say that Huntington players have assaulted them in the parking lot after games.
So that's a really reverse-engineered way to get approval for the girls Fight Club, they're supposed to be teaching teens how to defend themselves, but really it's just girls punching each other in the face. Aren't the parents in town going to wonder why their daughters keep coming home with bruises and broken noses? And why their daughters are taking down their posters of Justin Timberlake and Robert Pattinson and putting up posters of Billie Eilish and Kristen Stewart? Just wondering. The crazy scheme of PJ and Josie to get closer to their cheerleader crushes actually WORKS, though really, there's no reason why it would. Because movies, I guess. Hazel's mother is sleeping with the quarterback, Jeff, so Josie uses that to break up Jeff and Isabel, again it's a convoluted way to make the thing happen, there might have been an easier way but it would have involved being honest and having a conversation.
The pep rally scene where Hazel has to fight a male boxer is also extremely contrived, I don't even think boxing is a sanctioned high-school sport, but wrestling almost certainly is. The whole goal of this scene is unclear, like what were the participants trying to accomplish, and what got accomplished instead? I have no idea. But again, it feels like absolutely nothing here is meant to be taken seriously, and it's up to the viewer to determine if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Same thing happens when Josie goes to visit someone she knows who lives in a trailer for advice. Who is this person, I mean obviously it's an older lesbian that Josie respects, but what's the connection, why introduce this character at the last minute as the voice of reason? I had to read the Wiki to learn that she was her childhood babysitter, and someone who also believed that the annual game against Huntington was sort of the equivalent of "The Purge", it's a night to just lock your doors and stay inside, because somebody's going to get kidnapped or killed. If this is true, shouldn't the police get involved with keeping an eye on this annual football game if there are likely to be fatalities? Meanwhile, Rockbridge Falls kids have access to explosives and end up killing a few Huntington players in retaliation, so it's a good thing there are no repercussions for all that. WTF is up with these plotpoints?
In the end this feels like a giant improv sketch, like give me a sport (high-school football) and a situation (lesbian dating) and the name of a movie ("Fight Club") and we'll work out all the dialogue as we go along. But the problem near the beginning of the film is that Josie keeps saying "No" to all of PJ's ideas, and I know the point of improv is to say "Yes" to everything, not "No." There are so many reversals contradictions at the start of this film it will make your head spin. Plus, did these girls ever even CONSIDER running a kissing booth for the fall homecoming carnival? Just saying - it might be a lot easier.
NITPICK POINT: Josie and PJ are in the car with Isabel, and Jeff, the quarterback, is blocking their way. They move the car forward and gently tap him with the bumper, and he faints and falls down, slightly injured. Then the car backs up and drives away. Well, if they had room to back up, why didn't they do that in the first place?
Directed by Emma Seligman
Also starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri (last heard in "Inside Out 2"), Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber (last seen in "Babylon"), Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Marshawn Lynch (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Punkie Johnson, Zamani Wilder (last seen in "Ant-Man"), Summer Joy Campbell, Virginia Tucker, Wayne Pére (last seen in "Empire State"), Toby Nichols (last seen in "Where the Crawdads Sing"), Cameron Stout (last seen in "Capone"), Ted Ferguson (last seen in "Brothers"), Bruno Rose (last seen in "Jumanji: The Next Level"), Zach Primo, Elizabeth Newcomer (last seen in "Assassination Nation")
RATING: 5 out of 10 stories from juvie
No comments:
Post a Comment