'Pizza Movie' review: Stoner comedy topped with stupidity

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Here's some life advice: If an old, dusty tin of mints falls from the ceiling of your dorm room, it would be best to throw the tin away. Do not sample the mints in question, especially after learning that they're not mints at all, but that they are, in fact, psychedelic drugs that were designed by a former student played by "Saturday Night Live" star and Great Neck native Sarah Sherman.

Ah, but college is all about learning experiences, or so they say. So roommates and close pals, Jack (Gaten Matarazzo of "Stranger Things" fame) and Montgomery (Sean Giambrone), sample the drugs and find themselves on a feature film-length psychedelic trip in "Pizza Movie." They could sober up with a nice fresh pizza, you see, but that involves collecting the pie in question from their dorm lobby. This is easier said than done while you're this high.

Co-stars include Peyton Elizabeth Lee (the Disney series "Andi Mack"), Lulu Wilson (the "Becky" action movies), comedian Caleb Hearon and the voice of Daniel Radcliffe as a butterfly. Yes, a butterfly. The filmmakers are Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, who perform sketch comedy as the duo BriTANicK and whose past credits include an "SNL" writing stint.

If this sounds like an appealing way to spend about 97 minutes, the movie is streaming on Hulu.

MY SAY This must have seemed funny to the writers. It probably read that way when the actors got the script. But my goodness does it flail when brought to life on the screen in a collection of pointless and random hallucinatory digressions that mean nothing and go nowhere as they desperately strive for laughs.

We get exploding heads and random creatures, the collapsing of space and time, and a comedy structured around the phases of the drug trip, which occurs in stages with names like "Make the Baby Like It" and "The Ol' Switcheroo." It's about as funny as a colonoscopy.

There must be an audience for this somewhere. Maybe it's your everyday stoner comedy crowd. But one has to assume that even the biggest fans of these movies would feel like they've seen all of this before.

The finest examples of the stoner movie, for example, the wonderful 2007 Anna Faris film "Smiley Face," find a way to incorporate the drug humor into a larger framework. They make a satirical point, they say something about the world as it is, or they otherwise resonate in some fashion beyond just offering up a series of bits.

This movie has none of that.

You know how some "SNL" sketches bomb so badly that they feel like they'll never end, even if you know they will in a matter of minutes? Imagine an entire movie that plays exactly like that, and you'll understand what it feels like to submit to "Pizza Movie."

BOTTOM LINE We didn't laugh one time.