Bottoms is a typical teen sex comedy – on the surface.

The film, which is in theaters now, was directed by Emma Seligman, takes the hoary concept of two teens who want to get laid ASAP and adds so many absurd and even unhinged touches that it resembles 1990’s Heathers more than it does American Pie, et al.

Starring Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) and Rachel Sennot (Bodies, Bodies, Bodies) who co-wrote the script with Seligman, play Josie and PJ, who are both queer and ready to lose their virginity to their respective crushes, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s daughter.) Unfortunately, Josie and PJ are on the bottom rung of the high school hierarchy, as even the principal joins the school in referring to them as “ugly, untalented gays.”

The top rung of the school’s social ladder is occupied, of course, by the football players, who are unironically venerated by the entire school in the most literal way, as the team stars are featured in religious-style iconography posted throughout the school. Josie and PJ have zero game, and though they bombed out hitting on their crushes, they get a second chance when Isabel needs rescuing from star football player Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine), the most cocksure and unself-aware player on a squad full of arrogant assholes.

During the rescue attempt, Josie slightly bumps Jeff with her car, causing him to play up the non-injury for sympathy. Josie and PJ’s friend Hazel (Ruby Cruz) feeds the rumor mill by telling everyone that the two spent the summer in Juvie, a bit of sarcasm that she took to be sincere. But rather than set the record straight, so to speak, the two lovelorn teens lean into their unearned bad reputations, claiming to have won several fights.

And that sparks a lightbulb moment for Josie: why don’t they figure out how to fight for real, and even teach the other girls in school how to protect themselves. The idea, of course, is to get the cheerleaders to join, but at first they only attract their near-peers in social standing. Before long, though, the rest of the school takes notice of the club, including Isabel and Brittany, who want to learn to protect themselves.

While PJ and Josie try to use their fight lessons as a chance to seduce their crushes, they find they must join the others in truly learning self-defense, both to protect their faux-tough personas and to help the girls in the club keep themselves safe for the upcoming football game against’s the school’s bitterest rival.

While the plot line hits all the beats of the standard lowbrow fare aimed at teenagers (or adults with a similar mentality), Bottoms elevates the story by adding unexpected and audacious twists that go beyond just changing the gender of the protagonists. The movie racks up a (non-sexual) body count that puts Heathers to shame, and never stops amplifying the presence of the over-the-top, stereotypical teen movie archetypes like the misunderstood weirdo, horny cougar, authoritarian principle and dumb jocks, but in a deft and subtle way that makes the absurdity part of the background noise of the film, and then adds increasingly surprising and violent (in a funny way) action onto that noise.

The acting is fantastic in this. Sennot’s manic energy is the ideal counter to Edebiri’s subdued panic; the two are former college roommates who have worked together before and their on-screen friendship is obviously a mirror of an off-screen one. Marshawn Lynch is hilarious in a small role as the group’s faculty sponsor, Mr. G, who gets way more involved in the club than the girls had hoped. The other girls in the club, including Cruz, Zamani Wilder, and Summer Joy Campbell flesh out their characters as part of the ensemble cast.

Bottoms is, quite simply, tops. See it in theaters now.