Questionable Behavior

 

BOTTOMS (A-minus) - This is the gut-busting, crowd-pleasing comedy of summer. Writer-director Emma Seligman and writer-actor Rachel Sennott have created a hyper-speed send-up of high-school comedies, a vulgar mish-mash of genres (ranging from "Breakfast Club" to "Fight Club") with non-stop jokes and two perfect lead performances.

Sennott stars as PJ, a frumpy lesbian who schemes with her best friend, Josie (Ayo Edebiri), to create a fight club at school as a way to seduce cheerleaders and thus lose their virginity before graduation. ("Do you want to be the only virgin at Sarah Lawrence?") Edebiri is deft and charming as the good cop to Sennott's bad cop, although it will be Josie who will have some explaining to do when it's time to reveal to her crush how they lied about why they started the fight club. (It wasn't about empowering women -- though, in classic Afterschool Special fashion, that just might the takeaway after all.)

The school and its inhabitants come off as silly and cartoonish, which gives Seligman plenty of ironic cover for just how ridiculous this all plays out. Football players wear their uniforms to school every day -- pads and cleats included -- and the hunky QB Jeff (it says "Jeff" on the back of his jersey) is venerated like a god by teammates and classmates alike. Josie has her eye on Jeff's girlfriend, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), while PJ has the hots for the willowy, stiff Brittany (Kaia Gerber). PJ and Josie are not shunned because they are gay; they are ostracized because, as the principal announces over the loudspeaker, they are "ugly, untalented gays."

The ringleaders rope a male teacher into being their adviser. He is played with fine deadpan panache by former pro football player Marshawn Lynch, who has a subtle way of having inappropriate conversations with his students. The one who really steals the show is Ruby Cruz as Hazel, the super-eager fight-club secretary who can't wait to escalate things into pyrotechnics. (She's also clueless about her mom having an affair with the star QB -- "I just thought 'Jeff' was her safe word.")

This all sounds flat when translated into words. But the jokes are sharp and don't let up, and the presentation is coy and clever. It takes a simplistic, cliched premise and layers it with subversive ideas about feminism and conformity. Sennott and Edebiri are confident and consistently funny; they have a Laverne & Shirley comfort level together. Early on, there are times when their timing seems a little off, but that might just reflect the looseness with which Seligman put this together. It's almost like a winking insight into what had to have been an improvisational exercise at times. (The outtakes shown during the credits -- another nod to '80s farces -- back up that theory.)

The two stars and Cruz keep their foot on the pedal and don't let up for 91 minutes. Not since "The Wedding Crashers" or "The Hangover" have I laughed so hard so often and nearly fell out of my seat. Some might find this too dumb to abide, but if you can't appreciate low-brow satire, that will be your loss.

MILLIE LIES LOW (B+) - Ana Scotney, a relative newcomer to the big screen, is a tour-de-force as an up-and-coming architecture student who panics before a trip to a dream internship in New York City and instead merely pretends on social media that she made the voyage and is having the time of her life. In reality, she is still in New Zealand, skulking around the streets trying not to blow her cover.

Millie is the pride of Wellington, a local girl making it to the big time, and her image is plastered all over the city as part of a huge marketing campaign (including at the airport where she has her panic attack in the opening scene). But Millie cracks under that pressure, can't bear to admit her failure to fly to New York, and instead fabricates a guerrilla Instagram campaign, mostly via cut-and-paste images, purporting to show her romping around New York. As you might expect, the big lie gets harder and harder to sustain.

Writer-director Michelle Savill is assured in her feature debut, unwinding a character study of a young woman panicking over one snap-decision that could ruin her life. Millie's anxiety is not without foundation; she has a strained relationship with her mom, and there have been whispers going around that Millie's success was built on designs that she plagiarized from her best pal, Carolyn (Jillian Nguyen). Savill (who co-wrote the script with Eli Kent) is sympathetic to Millie but doesn't let her off the hook. It is a layered examination of a young woman battling expectations as she is launched into her career.

The movie also plays small-ball, with charming vignettes of Millie sneaking around (living in a tent on her mom's property, close enough to the house to steal the wi-fi signal). She suffers a mix of small victories and significant indignities during her days of subterfuge. There might be one coincidence too many in service of the narrative -- especially when Millie is in the wrong place at the right time for a big reveal -- but it's not fatal to the film.

 

Scotney is a revelation as Millie, finding the right mix of humor and desperation. She is gifted at physical comedy, and her face conveys many moods. She resembles Alia Shawkat both visually and talent-wise. She carries this quiet film, creating a few indelible images along the way.