The Raunchy Teen Comedy Gets a Queer Twist

In the puberty-addled cinematic universe of the teen sex comedy, no carnal-minded pursuit is too implausible. High schoolers steal alcohol from other people’s houses, lose their parents’ prized possessions, drive across the country, lie about their ages, fall for undercover vampires, and get wildly intimate with baked goods.

, the latest entrant in this chaotic canon, puts a queer spin on these odysseys. The filmmaker Emma Seligman’s sophomore feature follows PJ (played by Rachel Sennott, who also co-wrote the screenplay) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri), two high-school girls infatuated with hot cheerleaders who barely register their existence. When a marries the boisterousness and misanthropy of its teen-comedy predecessors, and is often raucously funny. But its abundance of gestures to those past influences and uneven satirical swings sometimes threaten to overshadow the story’s emotional core.