Comedy is hard, and not all comedy is for everyone. Everyone has their own sensibilities, and these don’t always jibe with the sensibilities of those writing and delivering the jokes. A film like this one, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, attempts to thread the needle between being incredibly specific and incredibly broad, targeting both the wider general audience and millennial Canadians with a laser-like focus. Luckily, director Matt Johnson and his writing partner Jay McCarrol absolutely nail it here with Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, and deliver one of the best and funniest films of the year.
It opens with footage from 17 years ago of Matt and Jay concocting a plan to get their band a gig at The Rivoli (a storied performance venue in Toronto) and optimistically proclaiming that everything is going to work out for them. Fast forwarding to the present, they still don’t have a gig and rather than attempting to promote or practice their music, they focus on concocting hairbrained schemes to make the venue give them that gig.
After their plan to skydive off the CN Tower into Rogers Centre during a baseball game fails, Matt comes up with an idea to make his RV look like a time machine (a shameless homage to Back to the Future’s DeLorean) and record a video claiming the band has to play or the future will end. This, of course, is never going to work, but after spilling a bottle of Orbitz on the flux capacitor and getting the RV up to 88 miles per hour (or is it kilometres?), they end up travelling back 17 years to 2008 and the formation of the band.
Johnson and McCarrol are each pitch-perfect as fictionalized versions of themselves. The madcap energy Johnson brings is perfectly tempered by McCarrol’s cooler, calmer vibe, and it’s clear these men have been best friends for most of their lives. Their close association, plus some clever tidbits in the script and their performances, hammer home that each of them knows the other perhaps too well, and they lean into this not only for some of the biggest laughs of the year but some of the most heartfelt moments, too.
The script is also a love letter to all of their influences. Back to the Future (part one, but also part two) are homaged but so is Hot Tub Time Machine, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Primer, and a host of others, and any time something begins to not make sense, the film is quick to realize and handwave it away because the logic is not what matters anyway. This is a story about time travel, but it’s also a story about the power of friendship and the importance of remembering where you came from and who got you there.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a very silly, very Canadian, and specifically very Toronto film in all the best ways, and it’s also one that is full of heart. The kind of film you’ll leave the cinema wanting to see again. In short, despite its early release, it’s already one of the best films of the year.
Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie
Directed By:
Matt Johnson
Written By:
Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol
Starring:
Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol
Rating:
5/5
