Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Coverage
Big City Pizza review
An animated movie about a skeleton delivering pizzas during the big game. … That doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Big City Pizza
Directed by Dusty Saunders
Written by Dusty Saunders
Big City Pizza Review
Our coverage of this year’s Chattanooga Film Festival rolls on with a look at one of the more unique movies of the year…Big City Pizza. You come across plenty of animated movies in the genre sphere…but Big City Pizza is the first one I can recall that is told from a first person perspective…and in one continuous take. Admittedly, the latter is easier to do in animation than it would be in live action…but it’s an impressive undertaking, nonetheless. Especially when it is pulled off so well.
The movie unfolds from the perspective of a pizza delivery guy during the biggest sporting event of the year. As someone who used to be a pizza delivery guy…I can attest that doing so during the biggest sporting event of the year is a genuine nightmare. In the world of Big City Pizza…that event is called the Omni Ball Championship. Oh…and our delivery guy avatar is a skeleton named Boney.
The story takes place over the course of Boney’s shift. We ride with him…or as him, I suppose, as he makes his deliveries to increasingly bizarre people and locations. Boney has some relatable problems despite living in a world much stranger than ours. He’s in love with his coworker (the owner’s daughter) but hasn’t found the courage to ask her out. Now, a new hire seems to be quickly moving in on her. There’s little time to talk about it on the busiest night of the year. Especially when every stop has its own oddness and dangers to deal with.
From a dominatrix holding an anthropomorphic pig against his will to a snake haired woman planning to kill her cheating boyfriend…Boney steps into some intense situations. A fortune teller offers some hope in the romance department. A cowboy sends him on a long, bad trip. Basically…just another night in the weird world of Big City Pizza. If you think you’ve seen everything…ask yourself if you’ve seen a skeleton receive surprisingly graphic fellatio while tripping. Of course, his penis is a smaller version of himself and his partner isn’t real…but it’s still a sight to behold.
With any animated movie…there are some factors that matter just as much as the plot. The animation and the voice acting. Big City Pizza looks great…and the voice cast does a fine job with it. Given how much work this must have taken to pull off on the incredibly small budget…it’s really impressive how hard it is to take your eyes off of Big City Pizza. Admittedly, I’m not the best person to judge these particular aspects of an animated film. I’ve never been the biggest fan of them. But Big City Pizza looked and sounded great to me. And boy…did it’s one take motif and wacked out plot hold my attention.
Boney is a likable lead. In fact, everyone who knows him seems to like him very much. The people he meets on the job, however…well…there are some weirdos out there ordering pizza on the busiest night of the year. What’s supposed to be a fairly simple exchange continuously lands Boney in hot water. From fighting off a biker gang to force feeding slices to a submissive pig…yeah…Big City Pizza basically captures what it’s like to work as a delivery person.
If I have one complaint it’s that I wish we could have seen more of the game. Boney checks his phone occasionally to see the score and Omni Ball looks absolutely wild. It seems to involve football players using golf clubs to hit balls into basketball hoops. I want to watch that very badly. Even in a fake, animated setting.
The good news is that Big City Pizza offers plenty of wild distractions from missing out on the sporting event of the year. The continuous take might sound gimmicky, but it never overwhelms the story. It keeps the pace flowing quickly and helps make Big City Pizza a shift worth taking.
Scare Value
Big City Pizza is an easy recommendation. Especially if you’re a fan of strange animated films. Its continuous take helps the night fly by…even as every stop brings about stranger and stranger encounters. You’re likely to see some things that you’ve never seen before in this one. While one of two sequences near the end may go on a beat or so too long…the overall package is an enjoyable and unpredictable affair. This was a good one.
