By Grant Terwilliger
For a film called “Pizza Movie,” there was barely any pizza in the movie. Instead, the film focused around the college experience and told a classic coming of age story fueled by a wacky hallucinogenic drug.
Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher’s directorial debut, “Pizza Movie,” is an absurd and comedic journey starring Gaten Matarazzo as Jack, Sean Giambrone as Montgomery, Lulu Wilson as Lizzy and Daniel Radcliffe as a butterfly named Lysander. Radcliffe as a butterfly is probably one of the best things I have seen recently, but at the same time we never actually see Radcliffe; he’s there in spirit and voice.
The film takes place during a rough day in college when Jack is being taped to a clock for ruining the school football team and Montgomery is struggling to fit in and catch the attention of Ashley, played by Peyton Elizabeth Lee.
Following this rough day of events and a bottle of whisky being broken by the main bullies in the film, they find a tin of mints that fell out of the ceiling tiles. What follows is the comedian Sarah Sherman as Frankie, rambling about a homemade first of its kind British drug known as Mind Igniting Neural Tuning Stimulants, or M.I.N.T.S.
The M.I.N.T.S cause Jack and Montgomery to go through seven phases listed in order; make baby like it, no bad words, flashbacks, the ol’ switcheroo, Nothing but the truth, we are all one and “Your worst nightmare comes to life and shoves a chainsaw up your ass.”
Going back to the title “Pizza Movie,” the only way to escape the drug is to eat pizza. The only way to get pizza is to pick it up from the robot Snackatron 3000 on the first floor. What at first seems like an easy journey turns into a nightmare, will the main characters be able to pick up the pizza and make it out alive?
The themes of coming of age, facing adversity, making mistakes and college culture are a huge part of this film. The main antagonist Blake, who is played by Jack Martin, acts as an authoritarian dictator of resident assistants. The antagonists in the film are militaristic resident assistants who want to eliminate the party culture and the noise of campus life by sending misbehaving students to an old sinister looking dormitory off campus, Gralk Hall.
Surviving the different drug phases, getting pizza to avoid a nightmare and escaping the RA’s happens at the same time creating a linear storyline with complex and comedic scenes.
The cinematography was pretty simple, but at times the cinematography definitely made me question what was actually happening on the screen, were they really in the hallway or were they hallucinating? The cinematographers definitely had their fun trying to make simple color grading and common camera compositions interesting by adding in a weird cartoon octopus, a silhouette puppet show of Grail Hall and just strange and oftentimes absurd sequences.
The film to me felt like “Everywhere Everything All at Once,” but “High School Musical” edition. I will give this one four stars for creativity.
