Pizza Movie (2026)
Directed by: Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney
Premise: Two college roommates and their mutual friend (Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone and Lulu Wilson) use hallucinogenic drugs on a Friday night. While coping with waves of hallucinations, they must find a way to the dormitory lobby to meet their pizza delivery.
What Works: The best part of Pizza Movie is the subplot of an overzealous resident assistant played by Jack Martin. He has mobilized a militia of college housing staff who are on a mission to stamp out any trace of debaucherous fun and purge the dormitory of any unworthy residents. Most of the film’s comedy is confined to this subplot especially an early scene that riffs on the opening of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. The climax of the film is appropriately wacky and includes a clever self-referential joke. Pizza Movie is well shot by cinematographer Bella Gonzales. There are some trippy images and the use of shadows and light give the movie a slick look.
What Doesn’t: Pizza Movie is the kind of college drug comedy that would have been edgy or relevant thirty years ago. In 2026 it is passe and anachronistic. College comedies often come across as though they were made by people whose entire higher education experience was watching Animal House knockoffs. That is largely the case in Pizza Movie. Almost nothing about this film is relevant to college life in this decade. It often feels like a high school movie from the 1980s and 90s with jocks beating up nerds. In an early scene the bullies flatulate in the hero’s faces. That scene sets the tone for the rest of film and that is about as creative as Pizza Movie gets. The filmmakers try to do something absurd and even satirical but Pizza Movie is too dumb for that. It has nothing to say, rendering the satire moot, and as a drug comedy it’s not doing anything that Cheech and Chong hadn’t already covered forty years ago. Even in a silly comedy, characters and events have to make internal sense. Pizza Movie is incoherent. At some points the characters are hallucinating but at other points it seems that their experiences are real. The characters are unbelievable. Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone’s characters don’t feel like real people. The story takes them through a cliché breakup and reconciliation but it’s never believable that they would have been friends in the first place.
Disc extras: Available on Hulu.
Bottom Line: Pizza Movie is cliché and unfunny with a shrill and clumsy tone. If this is supposed to be satire it’s unclear what the filmmakers thought they were satirizing.
Episode: #1094 (April 12, 2026)