Pizza Man

Year releasted: 1991

by Nathan Rabin
May 24th, 2000

Packed with topical political comedy that's aged about as well as warm limburger cheese, 1991's Pizza Man casts Bill Maher as a tough-talking pizza deliveryman who stumbles upon a conspiracy involving some of the shakiest political impersonators of the early '90s. The film starts innocently enough, with the smug future Politically Incorrect host delivering a sausage-and-anchovy pizza to a mysterious West Hollywood address. Once there, however, Maher is at the mercy of machine-gun-toting Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley (not actually played by Tom Bradley). The two engage in banter amusing only to those with a photographic memory of early-'90s L.A. politics before the mayor is killed, leaving a vast reservoir of Bradley-themed humor tragically untapped. After fleeing the scene with token love interest Annabelle Gurwitch, Maher stumbles across a pudgy, fortysomething Ronald Reagan, in bed with a woman who vaguely resembles Geraldine Ferraro. A few choice bon mots follow--Reagan calls Ferraro a "tax-and-spend slut"--and they try to kill Maher. From then on, Maher rightly suspects everyone's motives, perhaps because Pizza Man's lighting is so dim and washed-out that it's never quite clear whether he's interacting with celebrity impersonators or the zombified corpses of celebrity impersonators. It's D.C. Follies meets Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid as Maher and writer-director J.F. Lawton (the Pretty Woman screenwriter, working under the pseudonym J.D. Athens) deliver some of the tamest political commentary this side of a Mark Russell special. It all climaxes in an onslaught of amateur celebrity impersonators when a bunch of easy targets (Michael Milken, Michael Dukakis, Dan Quayle) conveniently assemble to tell Maher of their nefarious scheme. Far from the beginning of a mighty cinematic movement, Pizza Man is likely the first, last, and only politicsploitation comedy in movie history.