Pizza was publicly screened for the first time at the Los Angeles Film Festival on the 21st.
It's no overstatement that this is a film I've been hoping for ever since I first sat down and watched "The Breakfast Club," all those years ago. Like master teen storyteller John Hughes himself, Pizza bring Teen cinema to a height that few are aware it can achieve. It's not a bunch of teens wandering around, pretending to cry, trying to have sex with each other. It's not an excuse to show off a pair of breasts.
It's just an honestly honest movie.
Pseudo-hunk Ethan Embry delivers with power I had no clue he had in him. Honestly, watching Ethan Embry in Sweet Home Alabama and watching Ethan Embry in Pizza, they look the same, but you get the feeling you're looking at the NOT evil twin. Newcomer Kylie Sparks (who was, very humbly, at the screening I attended) shines wonderfully as the overweight, mal-adjusted, teetering on the brink of adulthood lead, like Ricki Lake before her. Actually, I take that back, she's BETTER than Ricki Lake.
Pizza remains fresh and entertaining throughout. If perhaps it does fall into the "I love you, I hate you, I love you, I hate you" thing a little too much, it manages to tell a story of love and finding yourself without getting preachy, without copping out.
At the screening, writer/director Mark Christopher mentioned current plans to do a horror flick and a family/farm flick next, but if we're lucky, he'll come the way of teenybopper angst just one more time before he gives it up completely.
If it gets distribution, which it should, I'll definitely see it again.
9/10
