It’s certainly been a minute since anyone in the industry seriously tried to make a stoner comedy. The halcyon days of the Harold and Kumar series might as well be a hundred years ago and even Seth Rogen tapped out around Pineapple Express in 2008. Comedies in general have had a tough time gaining a foothold in the last decade and change, why put effort into a type that is intentionally meant to be, for a lack of a better word, stupid.
Well, Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney might be considered experts in stupid, and they come from an interesting background with which to approach this kind of a film. Though they have worked professionally in Hollywood for many years, as working actors and writers on Saturday Night Live, they were molded on the internet. As the sketch comedy duo BriTANicK, they amassed a pretty popular following on YouTube in particular, where there is a slightly different, distinctly deranged sensibility of humour, that you wouldn’t find in something like Dude, Where’s My Car?. Pizza Movie embodies that fairly well and very bluntly, a stoner comedy for the internet generation. Although the thing about internet comedy -and certainly where BriTANIcK’s strengths have been- it plays best in small, contained doses.
Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone) are mismatched misfit college roommates at the start of a new semester. Montgomery is hopelessly awkward and neurotic while Jack is a loose cannon in much of the school’s bad graces after an incident with the football team. To ease their stress, they try an experimental drug called M.I.N.T.S for a relaxing high, only to discover it is strongly hallucinogenic and the only antidote is pizza, which they promptly order. They then must wait out the arrival of the pizza while experiencing an intense drug trip and getting caught up in a series of bizarre conflicts and misadventures through their college.
What keeps up the fun for the movie are its leading performances, from Matarazzo, Giambrone, and Lulu Wilson as their old friend Lizzy, who jilted them for the popular clique, but who also winds up under the influence of M.I.N.T.S. Matarazzo, who is also a producer on the film, marks himself as an effective comedy performer outside of the Stranger Things mold, even if his character here matches fairly solidly with his character there. He really gels with the style and pacing that Kocher and McElhaney set as well. Giambrone likewise makes a solid impression with a caricature so enthusiastically stark and cartoonish that it brings the archetype around to actually being funny again. And Wilson goes toe to toe with both of them when it comes to playing her seemingly straight-edged character as just as outrageous. She gets some of the funniest beats and lines of the movie. Most of the rest of the cast, which includes Jack Martin as a psychotic R.A., Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Montgomery’s crush who is far more wild and eccentric than he anticipated, and Sarah Sherman as a goofy youtuber who discusses the drug, are pretty good as well -but it is these three who carry the movie through the randomized and truly deranged depths of their trip, divided into sections -including one where swearing makes their head appear to explode, one where they switch bodies, and one where they tell extremely blunt embarrassing truths about themselves -all building to what promises to be a particularly violent and traumatic culmination.
The effect of the M.I.N.T.S is the far more interesting part of the movie than the more generic elements surrounding it -such as the genuine tension between the boys and Lizzy and even the more zealous stuff involving the R.A.s (though the leader’s frustration with an older recruit played by Caleb Hearon is a pretty decent running gag). Some of it definitely feels included to pad out the runtime -although this is true of a few of the trip sequences too- and make the movie feel more cohesive and holistic. But the fact is, it doesn't actually have this effect. The movie does feel cobbled together of disparate parts that vary in quality. One of the subplots involves a robot delivering the pizza and its' existential crisis over needing affirmation of its service -a bizarre device and one-time funny gag that outlasts its novelty. The constant threat in the real world for the boys is being transferred to an obscure and hellish dorm too hyperbolic to make for a believable stake (certainly compared to what is in store at the end of their trip), and not particularly funny in its exaggerations.
Where the movie works best are in the individual segments of drug-induced hysteria -it's where McElhaney and Kocher are both most comfortable and most technically adventurous. Not just in the strange visual effects but in their snappy editing and stylized absurd compositions -both in hallucinatory visions and in reality, which are juxtaposed in fun ways. Like when Montgomery believes he has switched minds with his pet butterfly and results in him eating a jock's shirt, or when he, Jack, and Lizzy’s perception of themselves as merged into a single figure to fight the R.A.s is cut against their crude and awkward real attempt at a human homunculus. Leaning into jokes like this and other similar drug-fueled insanities, you can see how sections of the movie, or the film as a whole, would work as a sketch or even a short.
As a feature however, it is bloated -and feels especially so in the last act where the climax is noticeably drawn out. One confrontation is ratcheted out of proportion and then concluded through a slightly amusing though distracting fourth wall break, lampshading some of the film’s deficiencies as though it nullifies them. Then, just as everything appears to be resolved a second phase comes in that is distinctly anti-climactic (despite being more connected to the overarching plot) and is stretched out as long as can be justified. And there is entertaining stuff within this portion of the film, but it is also quite obvious that McElhaney and Kocher are at the limits of their creative energy and aren’t as spontaneous at resolving their story as they were in filling it out.
Pizza Movie is still a mostly entertaining time though, particularly if broken down by its chapters and seen as a showcase for some young talent to the comedy genre that has been severely lacking in that for quite some time -there really are no authentically Gen-Z comedy stars, and Matarazzo, Giambrone, and Wilson prove there is ample space for them there if they so choose. As for McElhaney and Kocher, this is the first of two movies they have penned this year -we’ll see if the next under direction from Jorma Taccone improves on their pacing and structural issues. They’ve got the jokes and a decently effective manic sensibility. Perhaps they could grow into solid directors some day.
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