Nirvanna the Band
the Show the Movie

5 outta 5

Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is a gloriously absurd film about yearning for stardom, missed opportunities, the weight of history, pranks, skydiving, documentaries, friendship and the validity of Back to the Future. It is a spin-off / continuation of the TV series dating all the way back to a webseries in 2008 and, crazily, it ties the original version of the show 17 years to the characters in the present. It is a little maudlin but also funny these guys are still trying to make it huge at the same damn stage across almost two decades. It also has bonkers comedic moments like the ability for energy drinks to manipulate space and time but also heartfelt bits between two friends trying to change the timeline across the streets of Toronto. Always reach for your dreams, even if it might break the future.

Matt (Matt Johnson) and Jay (Jay McCarrol) are two friends, roommates and bandmates of Nirvanna the Band who just want to make it on the stage of The Rivoli theatre. They have been trying since 2008 to get there, with progressively more elaborate schemes. Matt’s newest and biggest idea is to skydive from the top of the CN Tower into the open Skydome of a Blue Jays game to score a show at The Rivoli. Naturally, the plan goes completely sideways, but after a mishap with an energy drink and replica of the flux capacitor from Back to the Future the guys are time travelled back to 2008. When they are still trying to get on stage at Rivoli. They try to avoid their younger selves, and don’t entirely succeed and not do any damage to the timeline to avoid the Butterfly Effect like that movie with Ashton Kutcher. But when they make it back to 2025, things are completely different for the two guys, and their relationship has completely changed, and now they must fix their mistakes to set things right.

It is crazy/awesome that this movie goes from what starts as a prank mockumentary about two idiots trying to skydive into the Skydome into a time travel opus. Matt is always certain that his plans are going to work out. The absurd danger of jumping off the CN tower is just a minor inconvenience. Even when they jump, the dome is starting to close but he pushes them towards it, convinced they’ll drop through the rapidly closing gap. Before they make the jump, they wander around Canadian Tire trying to find tools to cut through the safety wire at the CN Tower skywalk. It is one of the mockumentary moments that make it seem real, and the reaction of the Canadian Tire attendant telling them that they’ll get electrocuted and die is hilarious.

When the guys land in 2008, Jay is a lot faster to realize what happened than Matt. At a show of the 2008 hit The Hangover and really offensive joke that makes the entire audience erupt has Matt clue in that they’re in 2008. And when they walk outside and see the billboards, it’s for 2008 staples like Grand Theft Auto IV and The Dark Knight. They then see themselves from 2008 with some really inventive editing trickery that makes the modern-day guys get close to their past selves. One of the funniest moments is when the guys end up trapped in a closet while their 2008 versions joke around and rock out, and by the time they’re all finished it’s like 2 AM. Matt ends up talking to the 2008 version of Jay and it makes Matt and Jay reflect upon what they’ve lost. One moment of Matt being ticked off leads him to write on a whiteboard in the past “Don’t Play the Rivoli” and it creates a knock on effect to their lives being completely changed in the future. The fact they’ve kept trying to play the same club for almost 20 years is really demoralising as Jay realizes how their lives haven’t changed while Matt keeps trying the same thing over and over.

The new future they enter is where Jay is a superstar once he left Matt behind. There’s a lot of really fun edits that place Jay into modern pop culture, even for a few seconds having him being the guy who got slapped by Will Smith at the Oscars. It is kind of a sad moment when Matt sees Jay at a sold out show at the Budweiser Stage and the love Jay gets from the crowd is shocking. When Matt goes to visit Jay after the show, Jay says that he knew Matt more offhandedly and they “used” to be in a band. This sets Matt off on a way to fix the timeline and the movie gets even more like Back to the Future. Matt references the music from BttF, addressing the audience that using copyrighted BttF references will probably sink the film. Like Back to the Future connecting a cable to capture lightning to facilitate time travel and saving people from a dark alternate timeline are involved. But for all the absurdist time travel, it has pathos when it delves into the years of failure between the bandmates. Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is a very strange and wonderful trip that may never make it to The Rivoli, but the joy is watching them try.