REVIEW: ‘Pizza Movie’ Is A Full-Course Meal of Heartfelt Absurdity

Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, a.k.a. BriTANicK, have been making waves in sketch comedy for years. Their success with live shows and YouTube has been enough to launch them into television, including a stint as writers for Saturday Night Live, but they haven’t actually made a feature film until now. Pizza Movie, which they wrote and directed, is the culmination of eighteen years of collaboration. Apparently not content to do anything small, their second feature as writers, Over Your Dead Body, releases later this month.

Pizza Movie follows college roommates Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone). General nerdiness and a run-in Jack had with the university football team have socially condemned the duo, the biggest consequences of which are bully Logan (Marcus Scribner) and psychopathic RA Blake (Jack Martin). Unable to leave their dorm room without ridicule, the duo decides to spend a quiet night inside doing some mysterious drugs they found.

Things get weird fast. The roommates discover a vlog from the drug’s creator describing the symptoms they can expect throughout the night, culminating in a lethal hallucination of their greatest fear. Fortunately, the cure is pizza. Simple enough, right? Except that the duo and the accidentally dosed Lizzy (Lulu Wilson) are so stoned they’re experiencing time travel and body swapping, which is enough to stretch the trip down to the dorm lobby to pick up their pizza delivery into an entire feature-length journey.

Gaten Matarazzo, Sean Giambrone, and Lul Wilson shine, but Jack Martin steals the show.

Peyton Elizabeth Lee steals multiple scenes as Montgomery’s unrequited crush, and the supporting cast includes several amusing appearances from comedy heavy hitters like Sarah Sherman, Bobby Moynihan, Caleb Hearon, and Daniel Radcliffe. But the film is at its best when it’s focused on Matarazzo, Giambrone, and Wilson. The trio shares excellent chemistry, and their dynamic manages to land great jokes and deliver the film’s most satisfying emotional moments.

Martin, despite probably being the least established member of the main cast, is absolutely outstanding as the scenery-chewing supervillain who manages to bring massive weight to what would otherwise seem like petty teenage squabbles. So many of these college comedies are so ultra-specific to an age group (and often a specific generation of that age group) that they trap themselves within the confines of a specific audience, losing all relevance as that audience ages.

Pizza Movie smartly sidesteps this in multiple ways. The most successful of which is simply having such a grandiose antagonist that the film’s stakes feel more akin to Thanos or Satan than someone whose only real power is the ability to transfer a student to another dorm.

Pizza Movie manages emotional moments and fully realized characters without compromising on comedy.

The plot summary may seem a bit sparse, but that doesn’t mean the movie is lacking in substance. Rather, the film is so intricately written that it’s hard to go into minor detail without needing to go into major detail. McElhaney and Kocher’s script is so tightly packed with recurring gags that larger plot beats and more intimate character moments are difficult to describe without also needing to go back and explain all the scenes that came before them.

The result is deeply logical despite being entirely absurdist in nature. Much of the film can be predicted if one simply takes the time to remember all the gags set up earlier that haven’t yet paid off. But none of that makes the film any less funny. McElhaney and Kocher have clearly put in the work to make sure that every gag lands, and there’s rarely a wasted moment.

Pizza Movie delivers more satisfying dramatic beats than many of its peers, with all of the major characters and much of the supporting cast receiving satisfying and fully realized story arcs. It’s an incredible accomplishment for any comedy, but especially for a comedy so patently and unapologetically ridiculous in approach.

A little over a decade ago, pulling off half of what Pizza Movie does would have been enough to land McElhaney and Kocher a Marvel movie. In our modern era, where comedies get dropped onto streaming with little fanfare, it’s more likely to become a cult classic. It deserves so much more.

Pizza Movie is streaming on Hulu.