Bottoms (2023) Movie Ending Explained: Do PJ and Josie end up Hooking Up with Their Crushes? (2024)

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Anyone who’s watched Emma Seligman’s anxiety-inducing feverish debut feature, “Shiva Baby,” would know how fervently creative her style is. But who would’ve thought that along with her creative collaborator, Rachel Sennot, the director would deliver another comedy that would turn out to be somehow even more unhinged? This year’s “Bottoms (2023)” has already turned out to be Rotten Tomatoes’ highest-rated new comedy.

The raunchy teen sex comedy infuses a zippy, light-on-its-feet energy with snappy, instantly quotable dialogues. Despite clocking in at a crisp 92-minute runtime, the film moves at a breakneck speed only to submit the audience to its wholly committed heightened reality. That’s exactly why we take a detailed look at the film here, which might as well be the best R-rated satire of the year.

Bottoms (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

Co-written by the explosive duo of Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott, “Bottoms” follows the story of two queer teens – the overtly outward and impulsive PJ (Sennott) and the more contained Josie (Ayo Edebiri). The self-described “ugly and untalented” childhood friends come to realize they have no real chance of hooking up with their long-time cheerleader crushes before they graduate senior year. This particularly seems difficult with the school’s famous football players, such as Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), fawning over them.

When a misunderstood conversation gets the entire school believing the duo spent their summers in juvie, PJ and Josie decide to embrace it. Meanwhile, a rival high school called Huntington clearly has it out for the Vikings. Masquerading under the rumor of their experience in juvie, the two leads start a self-defense fight club in order to attract the most popular and pretty cheerleader princesses away from their boyfriends. Inadvertently, the two end up fostering a safe space for the school’s outcasts (and not just the hot chicks).

Sorry, But We Need to Break the First Rule of the Fight Club

As their secret club – which cheekily gets referred to as Fight Club – increasingly starts becoming a space where girls speak about their experiences and channel their insecurities, the group now must take on the responsibility of saving the Vikings from their blood-thirsty rivals. In creating the fight club, the two leads end up creating a group about empowering women. While the venture does end up attracting the pair’s crushes, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber), the legitimate bonds that slowly begin to sprout soon get upended due to Tim (Miles Fowler), Jeff’s right-hand man. The football players discover how the juvie thing was indeed a lie and reveal it in the grandest way possible.

Why Lie about Going to Juvie?

As discussed, both PJ and Josie intend to lure in their crushes with the excuse of the fight club. When they first try to chat with Isabel and Brittany, they barely get the cheerleaders’ precious attention. To make things more awkward, the film taps into a sort of looming angst that most of us go through while having our first dates. Not only are the two leads awkward in a typical teenage way, but they also never seem to have anything interesting to connect with them. Hence, the self-proclaimed title “ugly and untalented.” When the tempting opportunity of building upon a rumor seeps in, the duo feels pretty much in agreement to use that as an excuse to become the center of attention.

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Do PJ and Josie end up Hooking Up with Their Crushes?

After a couple of black-eye-inducing fight sessions in the club, the members of the club actually start to feel more confident and capable. But it also gives the leads their opportunity to hang out with Isabel and Brittany – both of whom share similar nervousness about the Huntington attacks. But while Josie and Isabel’s relationship develops throughout the film, culminating in a kiss and a deeper bond, PJ does not end up with Brittany. Well, she does share a promising kiss with Hazel.

Bottoms (2023) Movie Ending Explained:

“Bottoms” culminates into an ending that’s just as over-the-top and unhinged as the rest of the film. After the club’s fallout, the shocking news about the lie that once formed the foundation of something special brings only disappointment, thus putting a serious rift in the friendship between PJ and Josie. But when Jose gets a mix of helpful and fairly unwise words from Rhodes (a scene-stealing Punkie Johnson), she figures out that Huntington plans to attempt murder on one of the Viking players on the game night.

Now, with Huntington poised to strike, the fight club troops must end up resolving their issues to unite. After a quick confrontation, they band together in order to save their school’s football team in the film’s climactic showdown. What follows is a literal bloodbath in one of the most bonkers movie endings of the year.

Are the Girls Successful in Taking Down the Huntingtons?

Once Jose and PJ help reunite the team, they manage to discover how Huntington’s plan is to douse Jeff in pineapple juice. Throughout the film, it becomes a running gag about how Jeff is mortally allergic to pineapples. Now, storming onto the field to protect Jeff before he’s killed, the girls unleash a battle with the Huntington players. Well, to be more precise, they kill the entire team!

At the end of the mayhem, they bond more than ever before. And boy, are we delighted on their behalf. As everyone celebrates, Hazel’s usual getaway trick of using a bomb effectively ends a film with a literal bang. At its core, the finale of the movie more than lives up to its heightened setting. It’s bloody, cheesy, and overtly hyper-stylized. But it’s exaggerated enough not to contain the key subtext of a story that’s ultimately about women’s empowerment.

The Power Equation in Bottoms

Throughout the film, almost every woman is seen to be in some sort of problematic and negative dynamic with the caricaturish football players. Whether it be Isabel being in a ‘red flag’ relationship with Jeff or Jeff sleeping with Hazel’s middle-aged mom. Ultimately, while a football player implodes the fight club, the same comes to their collective rescue by the end of the story. As the girls take down the Huntington team, the film deflects its main villains as unnamed outsiders. It makes for a fair lesson on the power of unity, but that only comes after the film robs the actual symbols of authority (like the school teacher) of their power.

Final Thoughts:

“Bottoms” ends up proving itself to be an outrageous take on the conventional teen sex comedies we’ve grown to love. Not only the queer representation in the film feels refreshing, it never resorts to didacticism to put its statement forward. The packaging is so heightened and committed to the world of the story that even the borrowed elements from genre conventions feel all the more rewarding.

It combines the duo-on-a-mission hijinks of millennial films with the growth-through-conflict mindset of hyper-masculine films of the 90s. As the layers of teen angst unveil themselves, the gender dynamics take centerstage without ever diluting the central comradery. Even the most absurd details, like how one of the more agro football players stands in a literal cage, are presented so matter-of-factly that it makes the film even more accessible and fun. That’s precisely what makes Bottoms one of the best satires of the year.

Read More: Bottoms (2023) Movie Review: This Raunchy Teen Comedy Is One of the Most Committed Satires of the Year

Trailer:

Bottoms (2023) Movie Links:IMDb,Rotten Tomatoes,Wikipedia,Letterboxd
The Cast of Bottoms (2023) Movie: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Miles Fowler, Dagmara Domińczyk, Marshawn Lynch
Bottoms (2023) Movie Genre: Comedy/Lgbtq+, Runtime: 1h 28m

Where to watch Bottoms