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Tag: Nicholas Galitzine

  • High school farce ‘Bottoms’ rides on top | review

    High school farce ‘Bottoms’ rides on top | review

    Bottoms follows two deeply uncool high school girls that create a self-defense club with the hope of wooing their cheerleader crushes

    Emma Seligman’s vision of high school in Bottoms is equal parts satiric and surreal. Like if Luis Buñel directed The Breakfast Club or Andrei Tarkovsky directed Clueless. The pure absurdity of Bottoms is something to marvel at. Like the movie’s tagline suggests — “a movie about empowering women (the hot ones)” — it’s completely aware of the near-parody that it is. And thanks to Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott’s performances that cement them even further as our brightest rising stars, Bottoms rides on top for most of its runtime.

    Bottoms is in select theaters now.

    If you liked Bottoms, I recommend: Bodies Bodies Bodies

    To explain Bottoms, I need to spoil it just a tiny bit. The final shot of the movie, a baroque painting if I’ve ever seen one, pulls from a classic 90s / early aughts high school comedy trope. The school football team triumphantly raises the school’s quarterback. Students rush the field dancing with joy. Our best friend protagonists make up and hold each other.

    However, a few added details make this unlike any high school comedy we’ve seen. The field is littered with incapacitated (and possibly dead) players and our ragtag group of protagonists are covered in blood (both their own and others’). In the background, a tree burns after recently being blown up with a homemade device. Welcome to the wonderfully weird and wacky world of writer/director Emma Seligman‘s Bottoms.

    Seligman’s vision of high school in Bottoms is equal parts satiric and surreal. Like if Luis Buñel directed The Breakfast Club or Andrei Tarkovsky directed Clueless. It’s a tricky tone that Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri nail with perfectly pitched performances as woefully lame high schoolers PJ and Josie. All they need is a mission. And like any good high school raunchy comedy, this mission involves getting laid: “Do you want to be the only girl virgin at Sarah Lawrence?” Best friends that stick together get laid together. At least that’s their prerogative.

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    There’s two hang ups to this plan. First, the school doesn’t like them. As they say, “they don’t hate us because we’re gay, they hate us because we’re the ugly, untalented gays.” Second, the objects of both of their affections, Josie’s crush Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and PJ’s crush Britt (Kaia Gerber, most recently seen in Babylon), are the school’s it-girl cheerleaders who quite literally float in and out of scenes in slow motion.

    If things weren’t complicated enough, Isabel’s boyfriend is the school’s star quarterback Jeff (a scene-stealing Nicholas Galitzine following his breakout performance in Red, White & Royal Blue — talk about range) who is treated like a god amongst men and who his teammates, specifically Tim (Miles Fowler), will do anything for. In the cafeteria, the team is literally seated like they’re in The Last Supper except Jeff is Jesus and the rest of the team are his disciples.

    Which is why when PJ and Josie mistakenly “run over” Jeff with their car, the school turns even more against them. “Damn I got ‘F—-t #2’ this time,” PJ remarks at the graffiti scrawled on their lockers. Their plan to clear their names (and maybe get some one-on-one time with their crushes) is to start a self defense club where girls at the school can learn to protect themselves and like talk… and stuff. The plan is a little unclear. Despite what its trailer suggests, Bottoms is more of a hangout movie than it is driven by an actual plot. A cheating scandal, murder plot and “yeah Hazel, let’s do terrorism” later and we find ourselves in the final act not completely sure how we got there.

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    Bottoms is laugh a minute from hilarious one-liners delivered with charmingly awkward precision (“I was gonna study for Mr. G’s ‘Women Murdered in History’ test”) to visual gags (a spring breakers-inspired crime montage set to “Total Eclipse of the Heart”). However, that is just as much a detriment to the movie as it is an asset. While the delightfully off-kilter tone and surrealist touches make for an entertaining romp, the movie sacrifices plot momentum and character development in its wake putting more in line with a high school movie parody a la Not Another Teen Movie. That would be fine if Seligman’s screenplay stayed committed to the movie’s farcical nature. It gets a little too close to being profound in a way that took me out of the carefully built world. Thankfully it sticks the landing (on a pineapple juice-soaked football field).

    The pure absurdity of Bottoms is something to marvel at. Like the movie’s tagline suggests — “a movie about empowering women (the hot ones)” — it’s completely aware of the near-parody that it is. And thanks to Sennott and Edebiri’s performances that cement them even further as our brightest rising stars, Bottoms rides on top for most of its runtime.

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    Instead of a full story, I look at the movie as a series of vignettes of high school awkwardness and cranked-up satirical world-building — aided by a stellar supporting cast with standouts Marshawn Lynch as a problematic history teacher (“Feminism… what is it?” scrawled on the board), Ruby Cruz as well-meaning classmate Hazel who doesn’t completely understand sarcasm, and Galitzine’s Jeff whose cartoonish portrayal of a high school quarterback steals ever scene he’s in with even the slightest facial expression. The 2000s parody film may be dead (Scary Movie, you will always be famous) but Bottoms is born from it — a devilishly weird and demented baby.

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    Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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  • ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ is the sappy gay fairytale we deserve | review

    ‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ is the sappy gay fairytale we deserve | review

    Red, White & Royal Blue follows the star-crossed romance between the First Son of the United States and a British prince

    Red, White & Royal Blue is every bit as corny and sappy as you’d expect for a romantic comedy with a premise as improbable as the First Son of the United States and the Prince of Great Britain falling in love — but it’ll have you grinning from ear to ear. With a clear queer perspective and strong chemistry between Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, it’s almost impossible to resits.

    Red, White & Royal Blue is streaming on Prime Video.

    You might also like: The Half of It

    Red, White & Royal Blue is a fairytale. A gay fairytale. Like “first 50 rows at a Lady Gaga concert” gay fairytale. One where a line like “first 50 rows at a Lady Gaga concert kind of gay” is eye-roll-inducing but oddly charming at the same time. It’s an especially hard line to tow when the gay rom-com canon ranges from good (Fire Island and the unfairly maligned Bros) to tragic (Spoiler Alert) to “set gay rights back 20 years” (Love, Simon). However, writer-director Matthew Lopez finds a way to keep his adaptation of Casey McQuinton’s book of the same name from becoming an international incident (between gays and the book’s largely straight female fan base)… unlike the start of Alex’s (Taylor Zakhar Perez) and Henry’s (Nicholas Galitzine) improbable romance.

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    If you’ve somehow avoided the “Best Sellers” section at every bookstore in the United States and United Kingdom, Red, White & Royal Blue is a star-crossed romance between Alex, the son of the President of the United States, and Henry, the Prince of Great Britain. It’s a plot straight out of the romance textbook. After a gruesome run-in between the pair and a comically large cake at the heir to the British throne’s wedding, Alex and Henry must quash their beef (at least in front of the cameras) to appease both the King (Stephen Fry) and President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman). One mistaken assassination attempt and entrapment in a janitor’s closet later and the pair’s beef turns into a swoon-inducing banter-filled friendship… that quickly develops into more when they admit that their vitriol for each other was just meant to cover up an intense attraction. Enemies-to-lover girlies, this one’s for you.

    Perez and Galitzine, despite a shaky start, are convincing in their love affair with sharp repartee sweet and soppy enough to cause a toothache. Their conversations eventually culminate in a fateful New Year’s Eve party underscored by Flo Rida’s “Low” — the most romantic of early 2000s bops — where Henry confesses his feelings for Alex. While their romance is surprisingly devoid of real stakes — this is a fairytale after all, a happily ever after is inevitable — both actors put in surprisingly deft work to make their characters full of depth as they talk about their insecurities in both of their unique positions. Their interactions, despite all other parts of the plot being completely heightened, feel genuine. It in large part stems from a screenplay, though imperfect, that strives to be authentic to the queer experience.

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    There are knowing touches that make watching the movie as a gay man more satisfying, at least more than the book which I found enjoyable but wanting for more. Those details are most apparent in the tender centerpiece sex scene that has caused more of a stir than its actual impact in the movie — while it’s more graphic than a typical rom-com sex scene it is surprisingly tame for an R-rated movie. Lopez lingers on small moments — the slight push on a lower back, a shaky exhale — that feel like they come from experience rather than some romantic ideal of what it is to be a man with another man. Contrary to the vague objectification I felt from the book, the movie feels made for and by us.

    Additional to the success of “rom” part, Lopez also excels in bringing the comedy. Sarah Shahi‘s scene-stealing Chief of Staff Zahra is a highlight, whose sass reminds us that reading is fundamental (her delivery of “little lord f-ckleroy” is a highlight before a sarcastic curtsy brings the house down). On the other hand, Uma Thurman’s performance, slathered in a deep southern drawl, looks camp right in the eye (never in my life did I think I’d hear Mia Wallace say “Truvada”). The light tone makes the surprisingly robust two-hour runtime fly by.

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    Red, White & Royal Blue benefits from its themes at a surface level. While Alex has more recently begun his bisexual awakening and Henry has already accepted himself as gay — even if his duty quashes any possibility of being open — Lopez intelligently doesn’t hold those themes precious to the story (even if Ellen does say the line “the B in LGBTQ is not invisible.”) They’re engrained into the characters and their journeys, but it doesn’t stop them from charmingly referring to Henry’s… ahem, excitement as “Stonehenge” and “Big Ben.” It’ll have you giggling and swinging your feet like you’re a lovelorn teen again. And isn’t that exactly what the movie is trying to achieve?

    Cynics will find nothing but fault in Red, White & Royal Blue, a story that ends with the United States presidential election coming down to a single state (who could have seen it coming when Alex mentioned his Texas strategy plan at least a dozen times in the lead up) and the British public holding demonstrations in support of a gay prince. But the fairytale-like improbability of the plot is a feature, not a bug, as are cheeky if not corny lines like “I went to an English boarding school. Trust me, you’re in good hands.” It’s okay for gay men to have our silly little romantic comedies that require a suspension of disbelief. Even better if it’s told by a person that is chasing that very fairytale ending… even if it’s not with a prince.

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    More movies, less problems

    Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

    💌 Sign up for our weekly email newsletter with movie recommendations available to stream.

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