Overstuffed and cheesy, Pizza Movie is stoner comedy junk food
There’s an art to the stoner comedy. There’s usually a grand (or low-key) conspiracy that a crew of eccentric potheads seem extremely ill-equipped to tackle, only to find that their altered state eventually helps more than it hinders. The narrative must be requisitely taut to prevent the meandering reality of being high, and the plot developments have to be clever enough to cater to equally intoxicated viewers while never veering into outright confounding territory for the very same reason. Of course, rules are made to be broken, and Pizza Movie filmmakers Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher (known by the moniker BriTANicK) throw caution to the wind—and every conceivable idea at the wall to see what sticks.
Best known for their sketch work as writers on Saturday Night Live, FunnyOrDie, and CollegeHumor, BriTANicK’s shortform sensibility is woven into the fabric of Pizza Movie, which offers punchlines, gags, and one-liners in such rapid succession that it’s hard to appreciate a joke even when it’s good—and, perhaps by design, easy to forget its more cringe-inducing stabs at comedy. It’s a palatable enough format, but reminiscent of the time-suck of being stoned and aimlessly scrolling through TikTok. You might encounter a gem or two, but by the time you exit the app, you feel guilty for not having done something more productive instead.
The buddies at the center of Pizza Movie are Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone), who are staunchly situated at the bottom of their college’s social hierarchy. Naturally, they’re prime targets for jock abuse, which mostly consists of football players holding the friends down and farting in their faces while a gaggle of cool kids giggle on the sidelines. One such spectator is Lizzy (Lulu Wilson), whose blonde hair and trendy clothes are mere window dressing for her nerd-adjacent interests. She actually used to be quite close with Jack and Montgomery back in the day, happily playing board games and consuming geeky media with glee before joining the dark side.