Imagine the premise of “The Raid: Redemption,” but instead of Iko Uwais battling assailants on each ascending floor of a building complex, it was two friends descending the floors of their college dormitory to pick up a pizza while facing existential obstacles of all flavors induced by the heavy drugs they’ve taken.
That waggish premise gives some approximation for the feel of directors Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney’s uproariously unhinged “Pizza Movie,” though no descriptor can quite capture the singular experience of this particular trip. Most of this shouldn’t work, but it hums on through the propensity of its own escalation, its firm commitment to the “Yes, and” foundation of comedy. So many comedies, particularly those with coming-of-age stoner types, suffer from tonal imbalance, their most outrageous moments never feeling congruent with their premise. This film, out of the gate, arrives with such a sure sense of identity; all of its obscenities and absurdities radiate from that sense of fully formed confidence. Nothing about this film, emotionally or character-wise, may surprise you, but it’s the journey to the end that remains thrilling. There’s a reason why comfort movies exist, and “Pizza Movie” is the type of low-calorie guilty pleasure that offers just enough new ingredients to a meal you’ve had many times before.
From the start, “Pizza Movie” erupts with the type of confidence you can’t help but admire even if its wavelength might not be for everyone. Take its opening scene, where we’re introduced to Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone), two college best friends whose quotidian rhythms offer a perfect distillation of Kocher and McElhaney’s irreverence. Montgomery is at a laundry service when he sees Ashley (Peyton Elizabeth Lee), a fellow student and a girl he happens to have a crush on. The score from composers Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson swells into a sort of all-enveloping sentimentality we’ve seen in many meet-cute scenes prior. The spell is quickly broken when the discussion turns to the fluids that stain Montgomery’s underwear. In the following scene, we see Jack prance around the school like he’s the most popular kid in school, Birenberg’s and Robinson’s score yet again acting as his personal hype song. Each time he tries to enter into a friend group, however, he’s rebuffed, and the rejections only increase in violence and absurdity (think of the wicked tempo of Casper Kelly’s “Too Many Cooks” sketch). Clearly, the directors know exactly the tropes they’re poking fun at, and from the very first frame, it’s clear that nothing in this film will be spared from their deconstruction.
Having established that Jack and Montgomery are less than satisfied with their lives, they disassociate by taking powerful drugs, and quickly find their sanity and composure have gone haywire. As side effects are colorfully (and conveniently) explained in a video by a power user (Sarah Sherman), the duo realizes they have to eat food to offset the drug’s effects. They order a pizza, and the struggle to walk to the bottom of their dorm to retrieve it becomes a psychedelic battle for their sanity, friendship, and lives, as the symptoms manifest themselves in ways equally terrifying and humorous (it would spoil too much to say how exploding heads, body swaps, and a belligerent butterfly voiced by Daniel Radcliffe play into the mix other than to say their respective presences jibe well with the film’s wavelength).
Everything about “Pizza Movie” is dialed to histrionic levels. There’s rarely a moment where characters aren’t wearing their emotions loudly, or the film isn’t telegraphing exactly what you’re expected to feel. This is a movie where the RAs, assigned to crack down on drug usage in the dormitories, move like a military unit. You know that there’s some unspoken tension between Jack and Montgomery that will be divulged through the use of the drugs and then be resolved by the time the credits roll. It’s a riot to get there, and in many ways, the guardrails of the film’s narratives only offer its performers to beautifully color in and outside of those lines.
Matarazzo and Giambrone have an all too relatable and lived-in dynamic, who enable each other’s worst tendencies even while they’re ten toes down in the moments that count. They capture that feeling of how, when you’ve been friends with someone for so long, it’s easier to coast on what is unspoken rather than rupture peace by articulating honesty. The irony is not lost on them that while they may have taken drugs to escape their problems, it has only forced them to confront that which they’ve tried to keep hidden. Lulu Wilson gets moments to shine as well as Lizzy, a girl who has more in common with the boys than she cares to admit but finds herself drawn to the popularity and proximity of more ruthless children who couldn’t care less about her. Even the aforementioned RAs offer a type of clever point about how the people who grow up to be enforcers, border patrol agents, often cultivate their fetishes for unchecked power in these prototype vocations.
If you’ve only lived life by eating Neapolitan pies from L’Industrie, understandably, the first bite of deep dish from Pequod’s might surprise. But once you’ve tasted it, it’s hard to go back, and “Pizza Movie” is the type of spasmodic delight that elevates its genre rather than simply leaning into it.
This review was filed from the world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. It will be released on Hulu on April 3, 2026.
