Ayo Edebiri, left, and Rachel Sennott in Bottoms (Patti Perret/Orion Pictures)

PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) are self-described “ugly, untalented gays” and pretty much at the bottom of their high school hierarchy. The cooler gays are notches above and don’t even acknowledge them. PJ and Josie have crushes on two cheerleaders, Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu), though they gruffly acknowledge that they are likely out of their league. There’s also Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine, Prince Henry in the recent Red, White & Royal Blue), the obnoxious quarterback who is dating Isabel. In a plan to try to gain some cred and draw attention from the objects of their affections, PJ and Josie create a “safe space” at their school, a women’s self-defense and empowerment club that breaks down into a fight club.

Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, co-written by Sennott, is a continuously rollicking teen movie. It’s loose, pissed off, and doesn’t really care if you like it or not. In fact, its cavalier, unsentimental view of the outsider could be a lifeline for a young queer person somewhere.

As in any teen movie, no matter how subversive it aims to be, a certain formula lies underneath. There’s the popular girl (Gerber, who is also Cindy Crawford’s daughter) and the banal emphasis on traditional Westernized standards of beauty. Yet there may be more than what meets the eye regarding Brittany—but the film decidedly doesn’t create a false sense of the revelatory. Jeff is a jerk, constantly fawned over and exalted in the school, filmed with Christ-like imagery, including a Last Supper setup in the cafeteria. His jock persona is portrayed as a straight, effeminate villain—at one point, he dances around his room listening to Bonnie Tyler on his yellow discman as the fight club fruitlessly attempts to egg and toilet paper his Teflon-mansion. Parents are largely invisible, except for a mom (Dagmara Dominczyk) who happens to be hooking up with Jeff.

The film is more vibrant when the actors carve out unusual, specific characters. Rachel Sennott is a fierce and true talent as evidenced in Bodies Bodies Bodies and as the lead in Shiva Baby, Seligman’s skillful directorial debut. Here, she’s a generous screen partner, letting Edebiri shine. As Mr. G—the teacher who basically does not teach, but sits back and reads porno mags in class—former NFL player Marshawn Lynch is excellent and very funny and understated. Same goes for a brief turn by Saturday Night Live’s Punkie Johnson, as a sage lesbian living in a camper, serving spiked chocolate milk in kitschy anthropomorphic mugs.

The music by Leo Birenberg and pop star Charli XCX is often piercing and buoyant, but occasionally smothers the movie—perhaps covering up that not much is happening. The flagrant bloody fight set pieces are pitched seemingly for comedy, although they end up feeling flat, perhaps purposefully so. There are some songs that enhance a few of the montages though. When the angsty pop sheen of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” takes flight, it’s perfect, and it feels much more alive here than when it first came out in 2002, an era in which teen comedies that likely inspired this movie were proliferating. (The poster art for Bottoms recalls Sorority Boys, among others.)

The film boasts warped silliness, rage, a few good zingers here and there, a charging momentum, and some smart aesthetics. The two leads are often in the center of the frame, and slowly throughout, they become a bit separated as their bond frays. The setting feels like a mishmash of different eras—we glimpse the passé flip phone, the discman, and, gasp, the phone book. That’s one reason why the costuming by Eunice Jera Lee is a treat, a sort of mosaic of teen fashions from the early 2000s, with fabrics and textures, shapes, and colors of the ’90s. PJ and Josie often wear the tones of camouflage (greens, burnt oranges, and browns), while their higher-up classmates don crisp red, whites, and blues—the school colors. This may be a deliberately rude farce, but it’s also a vibrantly shot and designed one.