Pizza Movie Is The Perfect Combo Of Sci-Fi And Stoner Comedy
This isn’t your typical stoner movie.
College is for new experiences, and for many students, that involves illicit substances. Maybe it’s an unhealthy dependence on coffee and Red Bull, maybe it’s something a little less legal, but if there’s any time in your life made for experimentation, it’s then.
That also makes it the perfect setting for coming-of-age movies, which thrive at the cusp of adulthood where identities are truly fleshed out. From Animal House to Pitch Perfect, you can tell any story on a campus. That’s never been truer than in the case of Pizza Movie, the directorial debut of Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, better known by the collective name BriTANick.
The plot is simple: A pair of best friends, wild child Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and his anxious roommate Montgomery (Sean Giambrone), decide to drown their sorrows by taking pills that dropped from their ceiling and must venture downstairs to pick up pizza before their worst nightmares come true. The premise may be easy to describe, but that’s about all that is. As the substance takes over their psyche, they are forced to undergo multiple phases, each posing its own problem through different sci-fi tropes.
The result is almost an episodic romp through the tenuous friendships you make in college told in the language of familiar sci-fi and fantasy tropes, including exploding heads, time loops, body swapping, Voltron-style body merging, truth serums, fourth-wall breaks, and more that we daren’t spoil here.
“I was pumped that number one, a script like this exists, that it’s real. There are original comedies coming,” Gaten Matarazzo tells Inverse. “The first thing that came to my mind when reading the script was that one [tripping at school] sequence in 21 Jump Street, but for an hour and a half, which is my favorite part of 21 Jump Street.”
Aside from the sidesplitting humor, this is actually one of the most competently made sci-fi movies of recent years. Each phase of the trip fleshes out the story more and makes perfect sense from a logic point of view (or as much sense as a stoner comedy needs to make). But Pizza Movie isn’t a comedy movie that has a sci-fi twist built in; the sci-fi is just a natural extension of the comedy itself.
“When you want to take a comedic idea to its extreme, often you need to break out of reality,” McElhaney tells Inverse. “We’re often like, ‘Oh, let’s just do it. Let’s just say now this person can teleport,’ because it’s funnier that way. It takes you to a place that you want to go to comedically. So why not go there?” That’s how the pizza delivery gets facilitated by a praise-hungry robot voiced by Bobby Moynihan, and the dorm RAs become a secret police hell-bent on a technological scheme to rig the dorm selection process.
The cast is uniquely positioned to handle such a unique story. Matarazzo’s sci-fi pedigree is obvious, as he just recently wrapped up a decade of playing Dustin on Stranger Things. Despite fans clamoring for a secret follow-up episode, that’s very much off the table, though Matarazzo has his own ideas for more stories. “I would want the extra episode of Stranger Things to be a bottle episode in which we are prepping for a big mission together,” Matarazzo says. “Perhaps we’re about to go out into the Upside Down in our vehicles, and then the whole crux of it is ‘Oh my God, we forgot to fill up with gas.’ Remember that episode of Friends where they get stuck at that rest stop? Like that.”
Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone are perfectly cast as two very differently troubled freshmen.
Even Giambrone is technically part of a sci-fi franchise. He featured in a promo video for the Galactic Starcruiser, the now-defunct Star Wars-themed “immersive” hotel. When I mention this to Giambrone, Matarazzo’s face lights up. “Sean, you were?!” he asks in disbelief, pumping his fist when his castmate confirms. “Now I can’t go back to space!” Giambrone bemoans. “The hyperdrive, I got to ‘punch it,’ it was so cool. It was still under construction when I visited, but it was such a cool experience.” The jealousy on Matarazzo’s face is evident as he listens, crying, “I never got to go!”
It’s that enthusiasm that shines through in Pizza Movie. These are young actors who deeply love the fantastical genre but get genuinely excited to poke fun at it, too. Take, for example, the truth-telling phase of the trip, when each character is forced to bare their soul while trapped in a room with an RA played by comedian Caleb Hearon (yes, Hearon is 31, but his character took a “gap decade”).
“Now that I think about it, there had to be so much in that truth-telling scene of Caleb that wasn’t included,” Giambrone says. “I hope they released just the outtakes,” Matarazzo adds. “It’s gold. He’s a genius. He’s just an absolute game changer.”
Sci-fi is everywhere in Pizza Movie, even down to the robot that brings the titular pizza.
In that scene, Lizzy (Lulu Wilson) reveals that she has something in her purse that absolutely should not be there — it shouldn’t be spoiled, but whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse. But as ridiculous as it is, it’s also incredibly relatable. “I have a friend who has a very similar story to the Lizzie purse story,” Matarazzo reveals. “And what’s really funny is that this friend of mine told me this story before I read this script. I can’t wait for them to see this movie. And then I can be like, ‘Remember you told me you did the same thing?’”
Pizza Movie is a sci-fi greatest-hits album written by two of the funniest minds working today, but no joke feels superfluous, not even what lies in Lizzy’s purse. “The more callbacks there are and the more crossovers, the better,” Kocher tells Inverse. “And it’s so stressful, and it’s so annoying because you might have a great idea for a callback, but the setup doesn’t work by itself. But I think it’s so rewarding when it comes back in a satisfying way.”
Like a pizza after a hard week of classes, this movie is fresh, a little indulgent, and, most important, satisfying — no matter if you’re looking for a new stoner comedy or a completely bonkers sci-fi adventure.
