‘Pizza Movie’ Review: All This Over a Box of Pizza

This stoner comedy doesn’t quite get high enough on the journey for a slice of pizza.

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Hi I’m Connor. My life has always revolved around art—films especially. I see them as crucial reflections of the world we live in, as universal truths. Films have allowed me to become more open in the perspectives I see around me–as they reflect situations I have been in and cultures outside my background. Art has enriched my life. I found out I was autistic only recently at the age of 30. With this diagnosis, I hope to become a public figure that those on the spectrum can look towards. As for my writing? I have been featured on sites such as Dread Central, Film Cred, Next Best Picture and published within Layered Butter’s Seventh Volume themed around the work of Stanley Kubrick. Where my writing takes me, I don’t know? But I hope to create some works of my own, or at least contribute towards others in a creative capacity. I look forward to introducing myself to you through Cinema On The Spectrum and beyond.

June 18, 2026

3–5 minutes

Pizza Movie is the feature film directorial debut of BriTANick, a sketch comedy duo of Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher. Known for their YouTube shorts and SNL work, this is their directorial debut. Given this opportunity to expand their comedy into a bigger format and runtime does their humour work within a longer time frame? I am not so sure.

Pizza Movie follows two college students, Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Mongomery (Sean Giambrone) who use a powerful psychological drug called M.I.N.T.S.. Having ordered a pizza before taking this drug, they spend most of the movie searching for the pizza they ordered, which gives us the title, Pizza Movie.

This movie being essentially a stoner comedy results in a visual style that shifts throughout the runtime. Pizza Movie constantly conjures up various homages to styles of genre to keep the viewer engaged. The movie switches genres ranging from horror, action, and science fiction, with this genre shift in mind the main obstacle of the film happens to be RAs who are depicted similarly to Nazis doing drug sweeps throughout the dormitories. This threat enables the film to parody different genres that lean into a similar villain archetype.

This lends to the film well because it allows the film to switch gears and lean into various genre parodies. The problem with this is it has the irreverent humour similar in style to the television series Community and the 21 Jump Street duology. The gags found within both these works are visual enough to set up a punchline. While the Jump Street films are less sketch centric and mostly commit to one style, Pizza Movie reminded me of Community because it feels a lot like their themed episodes that constantly change styles depending on what they are parodying. The problem with Pizza Movie is that it feels like we are bouncing between different sketches until the movie ends. I did not feel I got to know the characters or understand the friendship dynamic between the pair to the fullest extent.

Pizza Movie finds ways to switch up its visual style during different stages of the drug trip. Sometimes it feels like science fiction, other times and action and during the deepest stages of the drug induced vision it becomes a horror comedy. Some gags are wildly left field such as Daniell Radcliffe playing a talking butterfly. But a majority of the gags feel very disjointed and don’t really work as a cohesive whole partly because it feels like we are jumping from one place to another and as a result the film feels a bit scattered. You can feel the seams of the duo’s background in sketch comedy where they struggle in coming up with a singular idea and instead have a plethora of ideas that bounce back and forth until the movie ends. As an audience member I felt I was thrown into a movie halfway through as the film slowly explained details about the characters.

While I commend the visuals and the risks taken with different genres emulated through different gags, I found the actual humour itself not really funny, and it made the relatively short runtime feel much longer than it actually was. While the cast brought their all to this production the film felt not focused on what it wanted to be. Instead of simply making the drug trip a few sequences within the movie, it took a majority of the runtime.

Pizza Movie is an admirable visual feast without consistent writing to tie the film into something memorable. For most of the runtime, I felt as if I had been dropped into a series four episodes in, you sort of get the characters dynamic. But the gears shift so fast that I found it hard for myself to feel attached to anything that happened. While film is a visual medium, there needs to be a balance between characterization and action so that the scenes not only work together but are part of a cohesive whole. Even if I did not enjoy the movie as a whole I want BriTANick to keep trying in the film space because they have an engaging visual eye and a strong knowledge of genre. I just felt that their characterization and story did not have enough to make this work.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Directed by Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher
Screenplay by Brian McElhaney, Nick Kocher
Produced by Jeremy Garelick, Will Phelps, Billy Rosenberg, Jason Zaro, Molle DeBartolo, Max A. Butler, Matt Whelan
Starring Gaten Matarazzo, Sean Giambrone, Lulu Wilson, Jack Martin, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Marcus Scribner, Caleb Hearon, Sarah Sherman, Justin Cooley, Daniel Radcliffe
Premiere Date: March 13, 2026 (SXSW)
Running Time: 97 minutes