Dear Gossips,

When I was growing up, the raunchy comedy was the domain of boys. It was the boys who were horny and stupid and messy and funny. This summer the raunchy comedy belongs to women with at least three theatrical releases that center women’s stories.

Jennifer Lawrence stars in No Hard Feelings which opens on June 23. Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu are in Joy Ride premiering July 7, and then there’s Bottoms (directed by Emma Seligman) coming on August 25, co-written by and starring Rachel Sennott alongside Ayo Edebiri as two “ugly untalented gays” who form a fight club, pretending to care about empowering women to defend themselves but really they’re using the club to get close to the girls they’re crushing on. Bottoms was warmly received at SXSW in March and a red band trailer for the movie was released yesterday.

So basically we’re dealing with a couple of baby lesbians who decide that the best way to dry-hump the hottest girls in school is to organise a self defence club and punch them in the face. Critics have described it as weird, chaotic, horny, hilarious, and bloody. Because of all the punching in the face, an obvious subversion of reductive assumption of what happens when a group of girls gather together and there’s blood involved. Or not. Because Bottoms doesn’t have to say anything, it can also just be a wild and ridiculous movie about stupid teens obsessed with pussy who just happen to be “ugly untalented gays”, LOL.

What a great moment for Rachel Sennott whose previous collaboration with Emma Seligman was the critically acclaimed Shiva Baby three years ago. Rachel is also one of the standouts in The Idol but Bottoms will be her win this year – and it’s probably more provocative and depraved than The Idol wishes it could be.

And it’s looking like it’ll be a big summer for Ayo too with The Bear season two premiering in a couple of weeks and she’s featured in The Hollywood Reporter’s new comedy actress roundtable with some experts predicting she’ll be nominated for an Emmy when the announcements happen on July 12.

Rachel and Ayo coordinated their outfits at SXSW. I wonder if they’ll do the same when they start promoting Bottoms.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Ayo Edebiri Gossip

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