Product Description
Lonely and outcast, an overweight teenage girl forms an unlikely bond with a thirty-something pizza delivery man on the evening of her eighteenth birt
Product Details
| Title | Pizza |
| Directed By | Mark Christopher |
| Label | Ifc |
| MPAA Rating | Unrated |
| Aspect Ratio | 1.77:1 |
| Format |
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| Original Release Date | 2005-01-01 |
| Brand | Genius |
| Studio | Ifc |
| Starring | Ethan Embry,Kylie Sparks,Julie Hagerty,Martin Campetta,Joey Kern |
| Running Time | 80 minutes |
| Release Date | 2006-10-24 |
| Manufacturer | Ifc |
| Publisher | Ifc |
| Region Code | 1 |
| Theatrical Release Date | 2005 |
| UPC | 796019796132 |
| EAN | 0796019796132 |
| Number Of Discs | 1 |
| MPN | 796019796132 |
| Creator |
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Customer Reviews
A lot of potential, but (wait for it...) Pizza doesn't deliver.Review by Robert P. Beveridge, 2010-03-16
Pizza (Mark Christopher, 2005)
In 1998, Mark Christopher directed 54. It became one of the sleeper hits of the year and has turned into a bona fide cult sensation since. And then he disappeared. Vanished into the wind like Keyser Soze until 2005, when Pizza appeared. I don't know where Christopher was that entire seven years. Surfing off the coast of Bora Bora, maybe? He certainly couldn't have been trying to get Pizza made for that entire length of time. Even if it was a pet project, he had to have seen how mediocre it is. Didn't he? In any case, it finally did get made, and the end result is a movie chock full of very talented, yet underutilized, Hollywood stars playing quirky characters. But I have gotten ahead of myself.
Cara-Ethyl (Complete Savages' Kylie Sparks in her only big-screen appearance) is just about to turn eighteen and doesn't have a friend in the world. Her mother (Confessions of a Shopaholic's Julie Hagerty) has thrown her a big birthday party, but since she blinded herself temporarily while frying doughnuts, is unaware that no one came. No one, that is, until Matt (FreakyLinks' Ethan Embry) shows up with a pizza delivery. Cara-Ethyl latches onto him immediately, to the point of convincing him to take her on the rest of his deliveries for the evening. The expected episodic mode with quirky characters ensues, with pieces of Cara-Ethyl's high school career interweaved into the story.
It's not a bad idea. In fact, it's a rather likable idea. But it's summed up quite nicely by a scene where Matt and Cara-Ethyl deliver a couple of pizzas to Cara-Ethyl's high school drama teacher, who's been listening to Cara-Ethyl audition for school plays for three years, always dismissing her with a "nice voice" and never calling back. Well, he's drunk, so he has her audition again in the living room. And there's the potential there; you can see that if she could let go of her extreme self-consciousness, she could probably belt out show tunes with the best of them. But she gets the same "nice voice, nice voice," and when they leave, she turns to Matt and says, "I suck, don't I?" You see, she knows. And so, I think, does Christopher.
It could be a lot worse, though. The movie's problems lie entirely in its script, which forces its characters to be quirky, rather than letting them develop naturally as quirky characters (viz. The Safety of Objects, for example). The cast does the best they can with the material they've got. Embry is very good in whatever he turns his mind to, and Sparks nails the part of the whiny teenager who just thinks that if she can get out on her own, she will suddenly blossom into maturity (and who consistently makes bad decisions as a result). The rest of the cast includes such indie stalwarts as Judah Friedlander, Mary Birdsong, Jesse McCartney, and Alexis Dziena (sultry as ever), and all of them are relatively good. Christopher's mistake, I think, was trying to shoehorn a screwball comedy formula into the oh-so-hip ironic-meta comedy frame. We do have evidence that such a thing can work (viz. Zombieland and The Hangover), but it is rare at best. Pizza has its moments, but ultimately fails. **
Eric Yetter shines as Extra!
Review by Tara Yetter, 2009-02-26
Watch for Eric's debut performance as the streetwalker's trick. Also see him dancing at the club. What a dreamboat!
I'd Order Seconds!
Review by Renee Embry, 2008-02-27
One of the best movies i have seen in a long time! Honestly i didn't really expect very much from the title, but it turned out to have a great "feel good" theme that wasn't to cheesy :) A great reason to stay home on a friday night and order pizza!
Not a new story, just a different way of delivering it.
Review by Concerned One, 2007-08-26
This is a tale about a young girl who is seen as an outsider because of her looks and her behaviors, who has to spend her 18th birthday alone at home with her mother. Just as the "party" is getting started, the pizza boy comes. But he's the longest running pizza boy in town, for the past 12 years. He is "The Pizza King", but what else does he have? In their brief interaction, they make a connection, and she decides to join him on the rout of deliveries that night. Follow these two in their journey to find out what is important to them both as they push each other's buttons all night long. I was pleasently surprised by this, can relate aspects of each of the characters to someone I know, easy to identify with. Some pretty funny parts. Tough to belive this came from the same director of "54". Worth a viewing.
a nice surprise
Review by S. LeBlanc, 2007-05-14
Nice little movie - very touching in some parts and way too close to real life in others.
