“Pizza Movie” revolves around the misadventures of a pair of misfit college roommates, Jack (Gaten Matarazzo) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone), who consume an ill-advised dose of years-old psychedelics. It’s an inauspicious premise, and one that promises familiar, even decades-old jokes.
But “Pizza Movie,” written and directed by Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney, isn’t a traditional college feature or even stoner comedy, not really. It has the exaggerated, hell-for-leather style of an early Edgar Wright movie — the whip-pans, crash zooms and split-screen frills of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” in particular — and the idiosyncratic, self-referential humor of “Community,” the college-set postmodern sitcom that deconstructed the form. It’s fast, witty, and packed with clever punchlines, though it still finds time for several scatological gags.
Jack and Montgomery’s fateful trip has distinct phases, each with unique side effects. In one, they are incapable of telling the truth, like a spin on “Liar Liar”; in another, using curse words causes their heads to burst like blood-filled balloons, a ribald tour de force that had me laughing painfully hard. To counteract the drug’s effects, they must seek out pizza, while eluding capture by their dorm’s nefarious lead resident adviser, Blake, played by Jack Martin in uproarious nod to Christoph Waltz’s character in “Inglourious Basterds.” (“You’re hiding a pickle bong and some alcoholic ice tea, are you not?”)
Not everything works: Caleb Hearon, as a newbie adviser, feels out of place and unfunny, and the film’s frenetic energy wanes a bit by the end. But Blake’s comeuppance, which involves a brilliant fourth-wall-breaking turn, leaves the movie on a — ahem — high note. I would order again.
Pizza Movie Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Hulu.
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