Director: Matt Johnson
Writers: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Jared Raab
Stars: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Ben Petrie
Synopsis: When their plan to book a show at the Rivoli goes horribly wrong, Matt and Jay accidentally travel back to the year 2008.
17 years ago, two friends Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol had a singular dream: to start a band and play the Rivoli, a prominent bar and restaurant space in Toronto that would catapult them to the top. “Nirvanna the Band” would constantly try to make this dream come true, with all manner of absurd schemes and ideas put into play, though all of them were to no avail. Despite their trials and tribulations however, Matt and Jay stayed the best of friends, and kept things afloat no matter what. “Nirvanna the Band the Show” is a treasured cult show for many in Canada, being a love letter to the country and Toronto itself, as well as a fun and bizarre collection of adventures that never seemed to work out entirely for Matt and Jay.
Years after the series, the two friends make one more play to feature at the Rivoli with Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. The plot is simple: now in 2025, Matt is still certain that he and Jay can potentially pull off this feat, and while Jay is still tagging along for the ride, he wonders if all this is worth it, or if they should just move on with their lives. In an attempt to get it right once and for all, Matt comes up with one final plan: to convert their RV into a time machine and going back to 2008, the year they first decided to play at the Rivoli, and change things so that life works out in their favor and they get the musical careers they had always wished for. However, as time travel usually works, once they make it back to Toronto 2008, things begin to go horribly wrong and change the future for the worse.
Much of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a sequence of events that will make you wonder “how did they do that?” every 5-10 minutes of its 1 hour, 40 minute runtime, as the shenanigans and stunts become increasingly more bizarre and unbelievable. Johnson and McCarrol waste no time getting to it, opening the movie with a plan to skydive from the CN Tower into Rogers Stadium to announce they will be playing at the Rivoli. Much to the shock of the viewer, they do in fact go the extra mile and then some to make that plan come to life, and it is an astonishing feat of physical comedy and stuntwork, and that stunt is just a taste of what is to come. It had to be a logistical and legal nightmare for them to pull some of this stuff off, especially when the movie directly begins homaging Back to the Future and brings in very direct references and even Alan Silvestri’s musical cues to bring the journey to life. It is a testament to the duo, then, that Nirvanna is as real and tangible as it is. The result is one of the funniest movies of the year, and one of the wildest.
Johnson’s attention to detail and slick direction is on full display here, even when portraying 2008 in the most accurate way imaginable, with ads for The Dark Knight and Grand Theft Auto IV looming over them, loud screenings of The Hangover, using camcorders from the time to reflect the show’s original visual style, switching aspect ratios from 1.85:1 to 1.43:1, connecting moments from the original web series into the newly filmed footage seamlessly. Where this attention to detail is most effective, however, is in showcasing Toronto and its various landmarks. Nirvanna is unapologetically Canadian in every facet, being a love letter to Canada and its culture, with tons of in-jokes and references to nostalgic advertisements, celebrity situations, real events that made the news, food items and drinks–a lot hinging on an Orbitz bottle in this story–making the movie a whole lot more special.
Johnson and McCarrol are fantastic here, realizing the dynamic between their two fictional counterparts wonderfully, as Matt tries to remain more fun and youthful, coming up with plan after plan to finally become a success, as Jay is getting increasingly frustrated and thinking about going on his own path. And yet, the movie excels in showcasing their friendship and how despite everything that comes their way, they still look out for one another, especially when they get to revisit and remark upon moments of their lives while Nirvanna the Band was coming to fruition and are reminded of why they have endured all these years. It’s a surprisingly effective, heartfelt and hilarious ode to the people in your lives who will be there for you through thick and thin, even if it involves entertaining plans surrounding jumping off the CN Tower or going back in time using an RV.
The less said in detail about Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, the better. It is a movie best experienced by just going to the theater yourself. Once they get back to 2008 and the timeline begins to get ruptured, the sequence of events that follow are outrageously funny, shocking, and even unbelievable to witness, and the result is a memorable continuation of the cult show Johnson and McCarrol started all those years ago. Do some jokes land a little less effectively? Sure. Are some plot beats predictable as it is a direct riff on Back to the Future? Also yes. Despite those minor gripes, one couldn’t ask for a more satisfying comedy venture from this team, and if Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is any indication, it seems like they are just getting started as far as their vision goes, and the world is all the better for it.
