There was a time when the stoner comedy was a reliable genre, particularly among the coveted demographic of young men. I remember those late nights in the college dorm quite fondly. Up late working on a paper last minute, ready for the weekend, and a friend suggests ordering a pizza and popping in the Van Wilder DVD for the 100th time. Living in the dorms getting into shenanigans was a rite of passage, something you can only really do in your early 20s and a time we look back on and think ‘how the hell did we even survive that?’ To be clear, I have never been on the doing drugs train, so the experiences of Pizza Movie aren’t necessarily relatable. However, the low brow, joke a minute sex/drug comedy genre is one that shaped my cinematic sensibilities, and seeing one return it to its glory days is a joy to behold.

Pizza Movie isn’t going to be for everyone. As a matter of fact, it’s tailor made for a specific person with a very specific brand of comedy. Someone who is already on board with its ridiculous premise and can rattle off a long list of similar films this one is hoping to secure its spot among. Road Trip, Sex Drive, Harold and Kumar, Euro Trip, even Detroit Rock City are all the foundations with which Pizza Movie is built. It’s a film for stoners, pizza lovers and cinephiles, the Superbad for movie lovers. The Grandma’s Boy for Gen Z. It exists solely to be the lowest common denominator joke machine, and anyone expecting something profound is coming at this with the wrong expectations. It’s almost a disservice to watch Pizza Movie with all of your faculties and without a pizza en route from Dominos. Watching movies can just be a fun, lazy, silly experience, and Pizza Movie swings for the fences of irreverence and comes out as one of the stupidest films I’ve seen in a while (complimentary) and I genuinely couldn’t stop laughing.

Wacky and Wild, But With Intentionality

Written and directed by Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher – BriTANicK as they’re known – Pizza Movie follows two college roommates whose college life isn’t going the way they had hoped. Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone) are relentlessly bullied by just about everyone they encounter on campus, and after a pretty rough hazing in their own dorm room they decide to have a chill night in and do something. At first, they were going to drink a big bottle of liquor and order a pizza. But after their bottle is shattered by their bully, they discover a decade old box of mints that had been hiding in their roof. Discovering that they are chemically altered drug with 6 distinct phases that get increasingly worse if they don’t eat pizza, they decide to take them knowing that food is on the way. Of course, nothing goes as planned and the pizza – only being two floors away – becomes an unforgettable adventure to restore their sanity and stop the drug from reaching phase 6.

It’s hard to talk about Pizza Movie as a singular object, largely because it pulls from so many recognizable comedies of days past. And yet, it still comes across as rather sharp and clever, BriTANicK clearly running wild with their ideas while demonstrating a knack for sustained comedic delivery. It wastes no time getting right to the heart of its wackiness, opening with Montgomery emptying quarters from a laundromat machine so his crush will have to ask for them and Jack getting strapped to the campus fountain while classmates hurl water balloons full of piss at him. That’s the baseline of Pizza Movie, so you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s for you or not. From there, it only escalates. And whatever boundaries or rails you think it can go off are destroyed with a sledgehammer and shot into space. There’s no real line they won’t cross, but there’s such a control over the chaos that nothing is ever done for the sake of it. Everything in Pizza Movie is irreverent with intentionality, never losing sight of how it feels to be young, dumb, and full of…um…unidentified substances.

Each phase comes with its own wild scenarios, and each phase gets even crazier than the last. It’s best to experience them for yourself so I won’t spoil them here, but nothing can prepare you for where Pizza Movie is willing to take you. It can feel overstretched and downright insufferable if you aren’t in the right mindset, and even as it recognizes its own silliness and stupidity often and packs every frame with actors more than capable of keeping the comedic pace, you can start to feel the wind beneath its wings slow down a bit. Not every joke lands in Pizza Movie, and if some of the extended bits don’t immediately pull you in you’ll be left only mildly amused. But with so many jokes in such rapid succession and consistency, not all of them have to land. Even at a 50% hit ratio across an easy 90 minutes, that’s still a whole lot of laughs.

Final Thoughts

Pizza Movie is a frantic comedy adventure fueled by bad trips, movie reference easter eggs, terrific performances, and a hankering for a midnight snack. It may get lost in its own sauce sometimes and indulges nearly every idea that comes to mind, but if you’re like me with a longing nostalgia for the genre, you’ll be rewarded with a quite the comedic treat. It probably won’t have the staying power of some of the greats, but given the current state of – well, everything – I think we can all use a heavy dose of laughter. So ya, pop a gummy, order a pizza, and fire up Pizza Movie. It’s a pretty good way to spend a Saturday night.

Yes, Snackatron. I am satisfied with my order.