The running gag in the web series Nirvanna The Band The Show is that the titular fictional band has never actually written or recorded any music. We’d get snippets of songs, but their attempts to play the nearby Toronto bar and restaurant, the Rivoli, always seem to go awry. It might have helped their cause if they’d actually reached out to management about actually booking a show, but that never seems to occur to them, instead opting for crazy publicity stunts that get them famous for something other than music. In the band’s feature film debut, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, director Matt Johnson (The Dirties, Blackberry) and actual musician/songwriter Jay McCarrol decide the best way to get the attention of the Rivoli is to jump off the top of the CN Tower and into the open dome of the Toronto Blue Jays home, Rogers Centre. The problem is, just as they’re about to jump, the dome starts to close, and they end up landing on the closed dome, thus foiling their half-baked scheme.
It’s a magnificent opening sequence that feels more like performance art than a plotted movie, and in fact, a great deal of the duo’s charm is how they improvise their way through so many twisted situations of their own making. Drawing inspiration from Back to the Future, Matt’s next plan is to somehow transform their RV into a rolling time machine, complete with a flux capacitor and other electronics that look a lot like the inside of a particular DeLorean. Once they get the vehicle up to 88 mph, it transports them back to 2008 (which happens to correspond to the timeframe of the original series’ earliest episodes), where they hope to inspire their younger selves to play the Rivoli. The way the filmmakers blend footage from the original series into shots of the older Matt and Jay is inspired and often very funny. And the way that Matt first figures out that they successfully time traveled is hilarious and incredibly clever.
While they do manage to make it back the present day, Jay sneakily finds a way to change the trajectory of his career by tinkering with the past. In the new version of 2025, Jay is a superstar musician who has no ties to Matt any more, and Matt attempts to convince his old friend to go back to 2008 and set things right. That doesn’t seem likely until Jay accidentally commits a terrible crime, and then suddenly going back in time to correct things doesn’t seem like such a dumb idea. There are gags involving the acquisition of a particularly rare soda, finding a way to string a cable from the top of the CN Tower to their RV (once again, all done for real) for electricity during a thunder storm; the gags go on and on, each one funnier than the last.
I hope Johnson and McCarrol find a way to keep working together (it’s my understanding that they are taking outtakes from the film and turning them into a new season of the web series), and maybe one day we’ll hear an actual song from this fake band. Johnson in particular has tapped into an abrasive character that is also sweet, charming, and loyal, which helps us to overlook some of his dopier personality flaws, while McCarrol is the quintessential straight man, absorbing his friend’s ridiculous and unnecessary ideas about acquiring fame for all the wrong reasons and rolling with them. Nirvanna The Band are a great comedy team, and I’m excited to experience their next chapter, after I stop laughing from this one.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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