Sketch comedy duo Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, aka BriTANick, write and direct Pizza Movie. This Hulu original stoner comedy is about two misfit college students played by Gaten Matarazzo, well known from Stranger Things, and Sean Giambrone from the long-running sitcom The Goldbergs, who ingest a decades-old experimental drug, and the only way to counter its effects is to eat a pizza.
The film opens on a flashback on a tin of mints being secretly hidden in a crawl space above the ceiling, and a voice in the background asking, “Where are the drugs?!” Ten years later, the tin hasn’t been touched, and the room below is revealed to be a college dorm room to roommates Montgomery (Sean Giambrone) and Jack (Gaten Matarazzo). Both roommates have had a bad day and look forward to drowning their sorrows in a bottle of whiskey, until a group of students barges into their room and the two are bullied, with their faces being farted on. A scuffle breaks out, the bottle shatters, and the mysterious tin also falls from the ceiling onto their desk. All seems hopeless for the roommates until they find the old tin, open it, and realize it doesn’t hold mints—it holds drugs. The circular pill has a weird face with an exploding head design on it. Jack is all for taking it, while Montgomery has his reservations, which leads them to Google what the drug is. They find a YouTube video from 2016 titled “Amazing New Drug!!!!” As the two click “play,” they are introduced to Frankie (Sarah Sherman), who explains what the drug is and its effects. Jack then peer-pressures Montgomery, and both pop the pill.
Initially, they don’t believe that the drug is working until an animated character pops up and swallows them, leading them to hallucinate being on stage with a Pinocchio-type character. When they come to, all they want is for their hallucinated trip to be over. They return to the video to see if there’s a way to make this happen, and the answer is by eating ingredients equivalent to a pizza. The rest of the film has the duo trying to make their way out of the dorm while navigating their hallucinations until they get a pizza.
“…two misfit college students…ingest a decades-old experimental drug, and the only way to counter its effects is to eat a pizza.”
Pizza Movie plays out very much like Dude, Where’s My Car? or Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. Both of those films coincidentally had the same director, Danny Leiner, which this movie could have used. It’s my thought that, because the writer-directors come from a sketch background, this is how the movie feels: a bit disjointed. There’s a certain connection that isn’t happening as a through line, and perhaps what their strength is in sketches doesn’t necessarily translate to a full-length feature. It’s almost like going to an improv show; there’s a suggested idea, and then the comedy troupe is trying to put the show together. In this case, we’re dealing with a bunch of new students trying to pull off the humor.
Speaking of new students, I’m not sure the duo of Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone works as comedy magic. Both, in their individual shows, are stellar, but the two together feel like a mismatch. Their reactions off each other feel more forced, so the parts where you should laugh are lost. I definitely understand the use of Gaten, as he’s been used to working in environments where the world of Stranger Things requires a lot of imagination, and a drug hallucination could be like seeing a Demogorgon. I really wanted Sean to work in his role because I was such a fan of him in The Goldbergs. I’m not sure if he’s too much like “Gilligan” and could be typecast because of that show, although he’s not wearing bottle-top glasses as this character. Superbad is a great example of how much chemistry can make a simple premise work. Actors Jonah Hill and Michael Cera were still up-and-comers, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse was an absolute unknown, and their casting nailed it.
There was recently an article about the writer Phil Stark, from Dude, Where’s My Car?, who’s now a therapist, and he discussed how that film would have a hard time getting sold today because there isn’t a big appetite from audiences for stoner comedies. If Pizza Movie is a gamble into that genre, even as a direct-to-streaming release, then I might have to agree with Stark.
"…almost like going to an improv show..."
