After playing Dustin Henderson for five seasons, Gaten Matarazzo just returned with his first post-Stranger Things outing in Hulu’s Pizza Movie. The Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher-directed stoner comedy debuted on the platform on April 3rd and turns a simple, 15-minute college dorm pizza run into a chaotic, psychedelic odyssey. Matarazzo and The Godlbergs‘ Sean Giambrone star as college roommates who accidentally take a potent experimental drug and embark on a chaotic, surreal quest to get from their dorm room to the lobby to retrieve a pizza delivery.
Gaten Matarazzo’s Pizza Movie Is a Cult Classic in the Making
Matarazzo’s first post-Stranger Things outing is already a homerun. The movie hasn’t broken into Hulu’s streaming charts just yet, but it debuted with a high 81% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and is already being described by critics as having “all the ingredients of a future cult classic.” The film is drawing comparisons to other comedy greats like Superbad and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, with RogerEbert.com’s Zachary Lee describing it as “the type of low-calorie guilty pleasure that offers just enough new ingredients to a meal you’ve had many times before.”
An unhinged fever dream with a no-holds-barred approach to surreal, drug-fueled college comedy, Pizza Movie is chaotic, fast-paced, and absolutely hilarious. The movie ultimately pushes the “night-out” college movie formula to absurd extremes with rapid-fire, surreal sequences, including exploding heads and over-the-top parodies, and the exact type of R-rated, vulgar comedy you’d expect from this type of film. And Matarazzo and Giambrone are the perfect vehicles for that nostalgic, high-energy stoner comedy. Described by Variety’s Guy Lodge as “a comic duo worth reteaming,” the pair share great onscreen chemistry and have no trouble balancing the slapstick and emotional moments of the film. The movie is simply a fun, absurd throwback to early 2000s hangout comedies, essentially serving as the Gen Z stoner movie the genre needed.
Other Comedy Movies Now on Hulu
Pizza Movie is the latest comedy arrival of Hulu’s streaming catalog following a rush of fresh titles at the start of the month. On April 1st, the streamer’s comedy lineup grew with the addition of movies like 50 First Dates, The Devil Wears Prada, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, The Heat, Napoleon Dynamite, the Shrek movies, and both 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street.
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