Every generation has its own stoner duo; Cheech and Chong, Bill and Ted, the guys in Dude Where’s My Car? Clerks, Harold and Kumar, Superbad, Pineapple Express, the illustrious line of munchie scoffers runs from 4.20pm to March 2026; the latest incarnation is Pizza Movie, which arrived piping hot for its world premiere at last night’s South by Southwest festival. Gaten Matarazzo hit stardom via his role as Dustin Henderson in Stranger Things, and doubles up with Sean Giambrone to play Jack and Montgomery, two goofballs in halls at a typical American college where most students are under the chemical cosh of experimental narcotics.
Pizza Movie kicks off in grand style with David Naughton’s seminal 1978 self-confidence anthem Making It, so we know the nostalgic-for-youth vibe; this is an anything-goes, consistently silly comedy that never takes itself seriously and exists primarily as a joke-delivery-system about being too stoned to function; the takeaway is, the gags are box fresh. Jack and Montgomery are hoping to navigate the ‘swamp of vice and buffoons’ that is college life, but after experiencing bullying by enforced-fart-inhalation and romantic-laundromat-frustration, they seek solace in mystery off-brand drugs they find in a mint tin, narcotics created ten years previously by Frankie (SNL’s Sarah Sherman) .
If combined with pizza, these drugs produce the desirable sensation of being on a ‘cloud of lavender being sung to by lollipop pixies’ but getting their mouths onto the freshly-ordered pizza proves a problem for the lads. They team up with Lizzy (Lulu Wilson) who has accidentally taken the same drug, but the trio find themselves up against Blake (Jack Martin) and his army of draconian and invasive RA (Resident Assistants) and their random room checks. There are six phases of the drug’s LSD-style effect to contend with, including a delivery robot called Snackatron, Daniel Radcliffe voicing a butterfly and other mad scenarios.
Deadpan dialogue like ‘You were reckless with the football team’s dicks…maybe you could think a bit more about other people’s dicks?,’ set the tone, but stoner comedies aren’t as easy as they look; they need observation, energy and repeatable gags. There’s musical references to Sondheim, but not the one you think of, we’re talking ‘clown-core vomit-opera’ music, you know, the ‘non-consensual death metal’ Sondheim best known for his song ‘My mother pisses death.’ It’s also funny (to me anyway) that the use of curse words causes the boys’ heads to explode, but ‘not the C-word’ and that’s ‘because it’s a British drug from Manchester England’. Them’s the gags, and you can predict your reaction to this agreeably low-brow movie from here, but there’s enough more good ones to make Pizza Movie well worth ordering when it arrives on Hulu in the US on April 3rd.
Although Montgomery’s romance with Ashley (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is a big motivator for him, it’s his bromance with Jack which is the real fulcrum of the comedy. Matarazzo has a Rich Moranis thing going beyond the thick glasses, and the two of them do a good job of making their double-act funny as they find themselves ‘tripping their balls off.’ Given that most of America seems to be high on something right now, there’s possibilities that ‘third party chargers’ and creatively-used stepladders could become shared cultural reference points for today’s youth. Could it happen in such divisive times? ‘We are all Juan’ is the film’s answer. The addled-brain-child of writers Brian McElhaney and Nick Koche and directors Brian McElhaney and Nick Koches, this is a pretty funny movie for stoners, bong-rippers, pot-pushers and anyone who enjoys silly, self-referential comedy taken to absurd but chemically-controlled heights. Grab yourself a slice…
Pizza Movie delivers April 3 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+. Thanks for access.