Once we didn't prioritize it as soon as it came out, then we talked about watching it with our younger son, who had belatedly plowed through all the seasons leading up to it. We thought he might demand a more immediate viewing, in case he wanted to talk about it with his friends or something, but my 12-year-old is a pretty patient kid. A lot more patient than I am, anyway.
But there were various reasons we couldn't start right away, one of which was, it was a mood thing. We had some family stuff earlier this year that sort of killed the mood for something dark involving a lot of death. I guess we're past that enough now that Stranger Things made it onto the docket again.
A reason we didn't prioritize it straight away, though, is that my wife and I are a bit over it. I don't think this is a unique sentiment, at least among people in our age group. The first and the third seasons, in my opinion, were really great. Everything else showed diminishing returns, not to mention far, far longer episodes. It was the latter consideration that really made it seem like such a chore to start. When you're watching a Friday night TV show with your dinner, you don't really want it to go on for 170 minutes. (I don't think there were any ST episodes that were actually that long, but I'm only exaggerating a little bit.)
And yes, I felt a sense of "when is this going to be over" tedium from the first 71-minute episode. The content was still fine, though "Vecna" is starting to feel like a sillier antagonist the longer I live with him. It's just I'm ready for this whole thing to be over, and I still have at least ten hours of content to wade through before that can happen.
This post is not about Stranger Things. It's about one of Stranger Things' stars, Gaten Matarazzo.
Who was also in the second thing I watched on Friday night, Pizza Movie.
Just how Stranger Things is now clearly directed at an audience younger than I am -- I mean, it always was, just now it's more clear to me than ever -- I worried that Pizza Movie, which I had heard mildly positive things about, would be intended for young people, who got all the jokes about brain rot that I didn't get.
Nope. Funny is funny. And Pizza Movie is funny as hell.
If you aren't familiar with the premise, it's about two college roommates who are desperate for a pizza that they've ordered. But in order to get it -- only on the ground floor of their dormitory -- they have to survive all six? seven? stages of a drug they consumed that fell out of their ceiling panels in a little mint tin.
One of them is Matarazzo, of course, but the other is a new discovery for me, a 27-year-old actor by the name of Sean Giambrone. IMDB tells me most people would know him from The Goldbergs (haven't seen it) but also that he's done a lot of voiceover work in animated films, which I can see. There's a joke about how he "sounds like an old man," which is actually true in a way. Anyway, this is the funniest debut I've seen for an actor in some time -- and I don't mean that he's actually new to the movies. But he's debuting for me. He's got terrific comic timing and line deliveries.
There are a lot of great set pieces demonstrating the stages of the drug, and each fully commits. I don't want to give too much away, but there's a part about exploding heads that just goes on and on and becomes funnier as it goes. Add in terrific supporting performances, especially by Jack Wilson as a sadistic RA who leads a gestapo that's cracking down on drugs, and you've really got the complete package in terms of comedy.
This movie left me on such a giddy high from moment to moment that I was considering giving it the hallowed 4.5 stars on Letterboxd. Cooler heads prevailed and I went with a 4, but the fact that it's rubbing elbows with 4.5-star movies means I'm recommending it in the highest possible terms.
There were some funny similarities between this and Stranger Things. Because it's Matarazzo, of course there are some similarities between the characters, though season 5 of ST finds his Dustin Henderson in a lot angrier place than the character in Pizza Movie.
No, the thing I'm really talking about it is that in both, his character has to fend off bullies who have a bone to pick with him for something he's done.
In ST, it's something having to do with the Hellfire Club and the damage wrought on Hawkins that is blamed on the club -- forgive me if I'm forgetting some of the details, as it's been at least two years since I watched those previous episodes, and even a lengthy recap didn't fully bring it all back.
In Pizza Movie, it's a poor judgment call that led to some unspecified disaster involving the college football team, though again I'll leave you to watch the movie to have that revealed, because it's pretty funny. As is the whole movie, if I haven't made that sufficiently clear by now.
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