Comedies don’t come much more eccentric than Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.
As its daffy title implies, it’s a feature film (Feb. 13, in theaters) about a band that previously starred in a TV show (and web series) and is now stepping up to the big screen.
In all those iterations, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrrol star as unemployed best friends whose musical dreams involve playing Toronto’s Rivoli, the problem being that they can’t book a gig and are a ridiculous act in which Matt performs spoken-word tomfoolery while Jay accompanies him on piano.
Theirs is a quest of the goofiest sort, and in their maiden multiplex outing, it takes a decidedly science-fiction-y turn. Nonetheless, no matter the out-of-this-world nature of their adventure, they remain an amusing and endearingly down-to-Earth doofus duo.
Johnson and McCarrol have been a creative one-two punch for the better part of two decades, embodying fictionalized versions of themselves in cult-classic mockumentaries on the web and TV, the latter of which ran for two seasons in 2017-2018.
While they’ve simultaneously worked on various additional projects—with Johnson writing, directing, and co-starring in 2023’s acclaimed BlackBerry and McCarrol scoring that feature as well as Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk’s 2023 horror-comedy Hell of a Summer—it’s as a team where they’ve truly excelled, their bickering-like-brothers camaraderie as ludicrous as it is likable.
Nineteen years after the debut of their online series, Matt and Jay are still concocting outrageous plans to turn their fantasy of landing a slot at the Rivoli into a reality. Jay is the mild-mannered straight man whose ivory-tickling facilitates Matt’s brainstorming. And at the start of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, the latter—wearing his trademark jacket and matching hat—lays out his newest attention-grabbing scheme.
Using his beloved white board, he explains to Jay that the way to draw a crowd to the Rivoli, thus earning themselves a show, is to venture to the top of the CN Tower, head outside via the EdgeWalk attraction, and then cut their safety cords and parachute down into the Rogers Centre (aka the SkyDome, home of the Toronto Blue Jays), thereby making a newsworthy splash.
To carry out this obviously idiotic undertaking, Matt and Jay visit a tire center and ask a salesman for help buying pliers. As is often the case in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, this individual is an unsuspecting local asked to participate in this fictionalized nonsense. His words of caution are as wise as Matt is crazy, and naturally, they go unheeded as the two begin their climb—a feat that, hilariously, proves quite easy.
Matt’s loopiness is matched by his indefatigable belief in himself and Jay, and in the aftermath of failure, he wastes little time devising another plan for success: building a fake time machine and pretending they’re from the future. The ostensible idea is that this will somehow impress the Rivoli’s present-day management.
Johnson’s protagonist is the sort of idealist who never says die and always sees success as his destiny, whereas the mild-mannered Jay slowly deduces that perhaps this partnership is doomed. Yet neither is prepared for what comes next: Johnson accidentally transforming their ride into a functioning DeLorean-style time machine that, in the blink of an eye, sends them back to 2008.
Stuck in the past, Matt and Jay strive to return to the present by finding their favorite beverage—a discontinued late-‘90s non-carbonated drink called Orbitz—which, in a comical twist, appears to have been the catalyst for turning their makeshift RV into an interdimensional craft.
This is one of a few gags in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie that’s distinctly Canadian, yet the film (written by its leads and directed by Johnson) speaks the universal language of absurdity. Its silliness escalates once Matt and Jay run into their younger selves and do the very thing they know they shouldn’t: change the past, causing troublesome ripples in the fabric of space-time.
Its aesthetics as chaotic as its heroes—and, for a brief time in 2008, filtered through an old-school video-camera lens—Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie moves quickly and delivers witty lines quicker, all while making intermittent pop-culture references, including a bit about Star Trek that’s so over-the-top, Matt momentarily breaks the fourth wall to opine about the copyright nightmare they’re creating.
There’s a fast and loose quality to the film that’s in tune with Matt and Jay’s go-for-broke DIY spirit, and the further it tumbles down a “butterfly effect” rabbit hole, the stronger its humor becomes. Just as importantly, its stars share such complementary Laurel-and-Hardy, Abbott-and-Costello chemistry—Matt the wild man, Jay the strait-laced and loyal sidekick—that their saga turns out to be surprisingly charming, at least as far as such lunacy goes.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’s funniest jokes are frequently its most random, such as Matt’s impromptu riff about a hip-hop version of the Alphabet Song or an endlessly replayed tune about the battle between creamed corn and a can opener, and it has fun with its Back to the Future conceit without pushing things too far into fanboy pandering.
Best is simply the rapport shared by Matt and Jay, who seem like real friends, committed to each other despite their obvious respective shortcomings (or outright failures), and whose excitement over the stupidest things—and their overarching career goal of taking the stage at the Rivoli—is ultimately infectious.
