Young gay women start a fight club

   If you haven't already, it's time you discovered Ayo Edebiri, the young comedian/actress who appeared earlier this summer in Theater Camp and who’s best known for her work in the acclaimed series, Bear.

  In Bear, Edebiri joins a beautiful ensemble as sous chef Sydney Adams. She scores again as a high school lesbian with a crush on a cheerleader in Bottoms, a risky comedy from director Emma Seligman, who directed the indie hit Shiva Baby.

   Working from a screenplay she wrote with Rachel Sennott, one of the movie’s stars, Seligman tells a boldly outlandish story about two   teens who feign a claim that they've experienced incarceration in “juvie.” Street cred established, they start a high school fight club for young women. 

   The duo wants to meet “hot” cheerleaders but sells the club as a feminist launching pad and mini-society for self-protection.

   Here, Seligman takes her biggest risk. The fight club is no feather-weight sham. These girls push and punch for real, usurping violent  strategies usually reserved for men. 

     The most obnoxious men in the movie are the school’s football players, who -- in blatant parodic fashion -- never take off their uniforms; even during classes, they refuse to shed the signature emblems of their identity.

    It’s far-fetched, of course, but Sennott, as the snarky PJ, and Edebiri, as the more wary Josie, are funny and engaging. They’re playing kids who have been tagged as “losers,” but both have an underlying sense of self that suggests they believe in their sensibilities, and the story eventually conspires to teach them that their adopted facades can be as much of a trap as football uniforms.

    Bottoms doesn't deal with the ways in which prejudice crushes young gay people. PG and Josie experience bigotry but they’re not isolated and they’re not jittery about declaring their sexual preferences. 

    Edebiri and Sennott, who starred in Shiva Baby, receive able support from Havana Rose Liu, as Isabel, the cheerleader girlfriend of the school’s principal jock (Nicholas Galitzine). Kala Gerber appears as Brittany, the cheerleader PJ is crushing on. 

     Ruby Cruz has a nice turn as Hazel, a club member who might be the most dangerously subversive of them all.

      Marshawn Lynch was never known for making public statements during his NFL career. Here,  the erstwhile Seattle star, known a plays a high school history teacher who accepts the role of faculty adviser to the fight club. Yes, he’s funny.

      Even ambitious comedies need plots and I wouldn’t say that Bottoms excels when it comes to storytelling, even though it stages an explosive finale with a riotous flavor that banishes any lingering thoughts of credibility.

      The physical violence — between club members and those deemed as antagonists — can cut against the comic grain. People really seem to get hurt; that may be part of Seligman’s strategy. She’s intent on upsetting an apple cart full of cliches about young women.

    Seligman eventually softens the proceedings to allow for genuine expression of emotion, a ploy that flirts with genre cliche.

    At  other times, the movie seems to be straining. Note the inclusion of a horny mom  (Dagmara Dominczyk) who's having an affair with Galitzine's high-school hunk of a character.

    Not everything about the movie works but Seligman, Sennott and Edebiri are onto something and, like the characters they play, they’re ready to make their mark, even if it leaves a few bruises.

Horror with a dose of satire in mind

  A group of privileged 20-somethings gathers at an estate-like home that belongs to one of their parents. A hurricane party is supposed to take place against the backdrop of a brewing storm.

  Sounds like the set-up for a zillion horror movies in which careless young people fall prey to a killer whose identity remains a mystery until the end.

   Working from a screenplay by Sarah DeLappe based on a story by Kristen Roupenian, Dutch director Halina Reijin subverts the formula. Reijin builds her movie around well-captured Gen Z dialogue and a final twist that gives the proceedings an ironic boost.

   Bodies Bodies Bodies begins by introducing Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova) during a prolonged kiss. Still early in their relationship, Sophie and Bee are headed for the party. A hesitant Bee worries about being introduced to folks who already know one another.

    Sophie seems to have had a previous relationship with another partygoer, the demonstrative Jordan (Myha'la Herrold). Jordan is not happy to see Sophie with a new lover.

     The rest of the group includes Alice (Rachel Sennott) and her date (Lee Pace), a slightly older guy who's not part of the rich-parent club. Emma (Chase Sui Wonders) and the party's arrogant host, Pete Davidson's David round out the list.

      Once the hurricane arrives, Reijin mixes murder and tension with laughs, including one great scene in which the  women exchange insults at a pace that's as horrifying and funny as just about anything in the movie. Insults about podcasts, mental disorders, and faux sensitivity fly like thrown knives.

      The movie's title is based on a game played before the onset of a hurricane-induced blackout.  One person, selected via a drawing, assumes the role of murderer. The others are supposed to guess the murderer's identity. 

       As expected, the boisterous exuberance of the early scenes turns darker -- almost literally. Many of the scenes are shot in gloomy darkness with the characters trying for illumination with their cell phones and glow sticks.

        And, yes, deaths abound, some of them gruesome.

        I don't know if Bodies Bodies Bodies qualifies as the definitive Gen Z satire. Moreover, the movie's cleverness sometimes cancels its attempts at generating fear.

      Bodies Bodies Bodies can be fun, though, partly because  Reijin knows how little these characters understand themselves. Narcissism trumps realization. The characters care a great deal about how they’re perceived.

       In a way, Bodies Bodies Bodies, like its title, is little more than a cinematic game -- but its well-played by a strong young cast that gives the movie plenty of zing.

A bereaved family gathers: Comedy ensues

 

   A post-funeral Jewish comedy, Shiva Baby mixes ethnic stereotyping, fluid sexuality, and a young woman's uncertainty about her future in ways that don't always mesh. But mismatched ingredients may be the point of director Emma Seligman's comedy.

   Shiva Baby bounces the frustrated energies of its characters against the cramped walls of the small house in which most of the movie takes place. Fortunately, there are enough laughs to keep you from screaming.

  Rachel Sennott plays Danielle, a New York college senior who's earning extra money by carrying on a sex-for-cash relationship with a slightly older man (Danny Defarrari). 

  To please her parents, Danielle attends a shiva for a departed family member. There, she makes a surprising discovery.  Not only is Defaarari's character at the same shiva, he's married to a blonde shiksa (Dianna Agron). To top things off, the couple has a baby.

    For Danielle, the occasion -- a gathering to mark the period of mourning and comfort the bereaved -- immediately turns fraught.

    Danielle's parents are sharply drawn, perhaps overly so. Fred Melamed plays Danielle's mostly clueless father. Danielle's stronger mother (Polly Draper) nags at the daughter she clearly loves. She also tries to steer Danielle away from a childhood friend (Molly Gordon) with whom she has had a fling. 

    The comedy revolves around what the characters don't know and what they know but refuse to acknowledge, a good basis for farce although Shiva Baby over-relies on close-ups and jokes about the mourners' obsession with food tend to be repetitive. And, at least in my view, the movie's stereotypes sometimes morph into wince-inducing caricature.

     Draper, Sennott, and Gordon give the movie's best performances. Draper's humanity undercuts her character's more stereotypical traits. Sennott conveys the deep confusions of a perilously ungrounded woman, and Gordon allows honest intelligence to break the surface of cliche.

    So, I'd sum up this way: If Seligman were a chef, I'd say she hasn't created a totally satisfying meal but she succeeds in bringing many of the movie's ingredients to a rolling comic boil.