“Pizza Movie” Review: Gaten Matarazzo’s Chaotic Stoner Comedy On Disney+ Is a Full-Blown Trip

Remember “22 Jump Street”, that 2014 masterpiece starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill? Specifically, that one scene where they’re absolutely out of their minds, cycling through every possible phase of a trip like their brains are running a software update from hell?

Now imagine that single scene stretched into a full-length movie, given a budget, and handed over to two guys who clearly asked, “What if we just… never stopped the bit?”

Yup, that’s “Pizza Movie”.

Now, from directors Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, the internet sketch duo better known as BriTANicK, this is a loud, messy, cheese-drenched sprint through a reality that stops making sense about five minutes in and never recovers. It doesn’t want to recover. It thrives in the nonsense.

So, let’s address the obvious. This is a very carefully thought-out and yet brash, dumb stoner flick that gained attention at the SXSW film festival last month.

Not accidentally stupid. Not “we tried and failed” stupid. Indeed, this is carefully engineered, lab-grown tomfoolery. The kind that takes real effort to pull off because you need to know exactly how far to push a joke before it collapses in on itself.

And somehow, they nail that balance.

We follow Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone), two college roommates who exist at the absolute bottom of the campus food chain. Not in a cute, underdog way. In a “everyone actively dislikes you on sight” way.

Furthermore, it needs to be said that some of the “students” roaming this campus look like they’ve already lived full lives. Specifically, we’re talking about full-grown men who look as though they’ve just clocked out of a construction shift before showing up to this dorm—men in their late 40s or possibly even 50s.

In the midst of this, Jack feels remarkably like Dustin from “Stranger Things”, albeit if the universe had decided to personally ruin his life after he left the den behind in Hawkins. While Matarazzo brings that same signature awkward charm to the role, the film immediately weaponises it against him. For instance, he walks through campus smiling as if he’s in the optimistic opening of a coming-of-age movie; however, every single person he passes hits him with a deadpan insult. There is no clear reason for the hostility. Instead, it is just a moment of pure, collective rejection.

It escalates fast. By the time he’s tied up on a clock tower and being used for target practice with balloons filled with something that should absolutely be illegal, you realise this movie has no interest in playing nice.

Montgomery is no better off. He’s deeply insecure, constantly second-guessing himself, and fully committed to the idea that if he can just impress a girl named Ashley, his life might turn around. It will not. But you respect the optimism.

Also, yes, that voice is instantly familiar. Sean Giambrone, aka Ben Pincus from “Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous”, brings a very specific kind of nervous energy that works perfectly here.

Things go completely off the rails when the two discover a box of M.I.N.T.S. hidden in their ceiling. If you think those are actual mints, we admire your optimism. Because, nope. Those are pure, unbridled chaos rings in… pill form.

Indeed, the second they kick in, reality folds… or unfolds… whatever.

Their dorm stops being a dorm. It becomes a shifting nightmare where every hallway feels like a different dimension and every door leads to something worse. Heads explode. Bodies swap. Time loops.

Hovering over all of this is a very specific, deeply personal threat. Truly, it’s the kind of thing that turns a bad trip into a mission. Because somewhere in this chaos, the movie makes it very clear that if they don’t fix this in time, their worst fears aren’t just metaphorical. And they are coming at them with a chainsaw that would be shoved up their butts.

In the middle of all this, the movie introduces its most important rule. The only way to stop their brains from melting is to consume the sacred combination of milk, tomatoes, and pastry.

Well, say it with us. PIZZA!

The problem is that the pizza is sitting in the lobby, waiting inside a delivery robot called the Snackotron 3000. Which means our heroes have to travel through two floors of pure insanity to reach it.

What follows is essentially a quest movie disguised as a bad trip. Each “phase” acts like a level in a video game. You enter, you learn the rules, you try to survive, and then you move on before your brain can fully process what just happened. There’s the initial onset phase, where the walls start breathing, and the lighting turns the dorm into a low-budget nightclub. It’s just disorienting enough to lull you into a false sense of security.

The panic phase is where everything breaks. At one point, Jack and Montgomery find themselves trapped inside a giant puppet’s intestines, looping endlessly in a way that feels like Groundhog Day if it were directed by someone who had a very strange relationship with Jim Henson.

And then there’s the “No-Cursing Zone,” which might be the film’s standout sequence. The rules are simple. Walk down a hallway without swearing. That’s it.

Naturally, everything around them is designed to make that impossible. Every step introduces something more frustrating, more painful, or more absurd. The second they slip up, their heads explode, and they reset at the start.

It becomes this perfect loop of tension and release. You know exactly what’s coming, and it still lands every time. F-bomb. BOOM. Crap? BOOM.

That’s the thing about “Pizza Movie.” For a film that looks like complete chaos, it’s actually very precise. The jokes land, escalate, and move on. Nothing lingers too long. Nothing feels like it’s dragging its feet.

Indeed, that momentum is what carries the movie from start to finish. There’s always a new idea, a new visual, a new problem for the characters to deal with. Even when a joke is dumb, it’s confidently dumb, and that confidence goes a long way.

At the centre of all this are Matarazzo and Giambrone, who somehow manage to ground the entire experience. Their dynamic feels real in a way that sneaks up on you. They’re not delivering big emotional speeches or having dramatic breakdowns. Sure, they’re just two guys who clearly care about each other but would rather do literally anything else than talk about it. So instead, they take mysterious drugs and fight their way through a nightmare for pizza.

Lulu Wilson shows up as Lizzy and immediately adds a different energy to the mix. She feels like someone who could easily exist outside of this madness, which makes her presence inside it even funnier. She’s sharp, slightly detached, and just grounded enough to keep things from floating away completely.

Even the antagonists get their moment. The RAs, especially Blake (played deliciously by Jack Martin), are played with this exaggerated sense of authority that feels both ridiculous and a little too real. They’re absurdly militaristic in this dorm. And somehow, the idea is to just kick out several on a hit list to a new dorm, which means they’ll get forgotten by society and never learn to live again. How does a college residency do this? We don’t know? At this point, we shouldn’t be asking too much.

The film itself doesn’t want us to ask too much. It’s just there to be funny. And it does it consistently. Sure, not every joke is a home run, but the hit rate is high enough that it doesn’t matter. If something doesn’t land, another gag is already on the way to replace it.

By the time you reach the final stretch, it doesn’t feel like the movie is running out of steam. If anything, it feels like it could keep going, throwing new phases, new rules, and new nonsense at you without breaking a sweat. And that’s kind of the best compliment you can give a movie like this.

And yes, at some point, Daniel Radcliffe shows up voicing a butterfly. No, the movie does not explain this. No, it does not need to.

“Pizza Movie” knows exactly what it is. It doesn’t try to be smarter than its premise. Sure, it doesn’t pause to justify itself. It just commits to the bit and trusts that you’re either on board or you’re not. If you are, you’re going to have a very good time.

It sits comfortably alongside “Pineapple Express” and “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle” as a stoner comedy that understands the assignment. Take a simple objective, throw every possible obstacle in the way, and let the chaos do the rest.

Is it downright ridiculous? Yes.
Is it loud and gross and completely unserious? Also yes.
Does it deliver the pizza on time? Absolutely.

So, grab some slices of milk, tomatoes and cheese. And have the trip of your life.

Watch the trailer here:

“Pizza Movie” is currently streaming on Disney+.