Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie review: Wildy imaginative and riotously funny

Imagine Back to the Future made with hidden cameras, improvised dialogue and a shoestring budget; Marty McFly and Doc Brown gatecrashing a Canadian indie comedy.

That’s Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.

For those unfamiliar with its peculiar lineage, this isn’t a reboot, remake or spin-off but a direct continuation of a fictional universe that Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol have been constructing since a low-budget web series first appeared in 2007. 

The premise has always been gloriously simple: fictional versions of Matt and Jay are desperate to land a gig at Toronto’s legendary Rivoli club, despite possessing little evidence that they are remotely capable of doing so. In the film, their latest hare-brained plan goes spectacularly wrong, accidentally sending them back to 2008 and entangling them in their own history.

The premise has always been gloriously simple: fictional versions of Matt and Jay are desperate to land a gig at Toronto’s legendary Rivoli club…

The time travel plan

Directed by Johnson, the film turns this unlikely set-up into an elaborate time-travel romp that folds back on itself with witty brilliance. Archive footage from the original web series and subsequent television adaptation is seamlessly woven into newly shot material, allowing the characters to interact with their younger selves without a single frame of digital de-ageing. 

The effect is astonishingly convincing. 

What follows is a gleeful collision of guerrilla filmmaking, public bewilderment and increasingly convoluted temporal logic. Real people wander into scenes and react with authentic confusion. Johnson and McCarrol throw themselves into their escalating comic disasters with unflappable, straight-faced commitment.

The result is wildly imaginative and riotously funny. 

The relationship between the two leads remains the engine that drives the entire adventure. Matt is all nervous energy and misplaced confidence. Jay radiates the weary acceptance of a man who knows this plan is terrible but has decided to come along anyway.  

I laughed loud at the pop culture references, the increasingly elaborate physical comedy and the head-spinning stunts that emerge from the film’s tangled chronology. Yet beneath the chaos sits something unexpectedly impressive: an extraordinary feat of long-form storytelling that stretches across almost two decades of filmmaking.

Shot over some 200 days on a modest budget, the film is larger and more inventive than blockbuster productions with budgets a multiple times greater. Its subsequent premiere at South by Southwest and victory at the Canadian Screen Awards feel entirely earned.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie works brilliantly whether you arrive as a devoted fan or a bewildered newcomer. If, like me, you come to it cold, the experience is akin to discovering a cult favourite in real time and wondering how you managed to miss it for so long. Those already invested in the mythology will delight in seeing the universe expand in ways that must once have seemed impossible.

A delightful cinematic surprise. Not to be missed.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is directed by Matt Johnson, and stars Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Jared Raab, Ben Petrie, Ethan Eng, Luke Lalonde, 15, 100 minutes.