Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is in select theaters now.
Half the fun of watching guerrilla productions like Jackass or Borat is the thrill of a flimsy artifice couching publicity stunts as if they’ve been pulled off “for real.” The camera, visible or otherwise, follows eager protagonists who ensnare an unsuspecting public into infantile shenanigans – a tradition dating back to the 1948 debut of TV prank show, Candid Camera. In the most technical sense, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie exists in that same vein, making it a delight to watch with an audience. However, it’s also a time-travel movie incorporating footage from earlier versions of the concept, forcing the story to twist around itself with head-spinning proficiency, leading to one of the most absurd, laugh-out-loud comedy films in years.
How exactly do you employ a sci-fi conceit while blurring the lines between real and unreal in a mockumentary where messing with actual people is the point? If you’re Canadian comedians Matt Johnson and Jay McCaroll, who play fictional avatars of themselves and enact hare-brained plans to get hired at a music venue, well…you just do. The result, born from the duo’s against-all-odds creative ethos, is a jaw-dropping blast that constantly raises the same core question as Alfonso Cuarón’s 3D space scorcher, Gravity: “How the hell did they make this?”
For the uninitiated: The legacy sequel, directed by BlackBerry director (and Matt and Mara actor) Johnson, follows his and McCaroll’s short-lived Viceland TV show from 2017-2018, Nirvanna the Band the Show, itself a sequel to their independent web series Nirvanna the Band, which ran from 2007 to 2009. You don’t need to have seen either one to watch the new movie, since it opens with footage they shot on cheap handycams in 2008, introducing us to the duo’s core dynamic: A hyperactive, fedora-sporting Johnson ropes the more laid-back McCaroll into trying to score a music gig at Toronto bar & restaurant the Rivoli under the copyright-skirting moniker, “Nirvanna the Band.” This is despite them never having actually written a song, or even contacted the venue’s management. After a mini-episode’s worth of buffoonery, the film skips forward to 2025 and finds the makeshift musicians in a state of arrested development. Johnson – who behaves largely the same, but has put on some weight – is still trying to convince a now-haggard McCaroll that his next plan will actually work, at the risk of a potential creative schism.
This (re)introduction to the characters also serves to convince new viewers to stick around for the ride. It’s hard not to, when Johnson’s latest ploy involves the publicity stunt of parachuting off Toronto’s iconic, nearly 2,000-foot-tall CN Tower, a scheme whose absurd logistics are funny enough until, shockingly, we actually see Johnson and McCaroll con their way up to the top of the structure for real. This dizzying feat – shot by off-screen comrades with hidden HD cameras – doesn’t go exactly as planned (in reality or in the fiction), but it’s pulled off with enough panache that any computer-generated seams are completely invisible, buying loads of goodwill from anyone who might still need convincing.
Nearly 20 years into trying and failing to play at the Rivoli, McCaroll is at the end of his rope. However, Johnson’s ultimate, galaxy-brained ploy is yet to come – traveling to the year 2008 by turning the pair’s RV into a Back to the Future-style time machine fueled by a long-defunct Canadian novelty drink. Before they know it, the duo finds themselves in an earlier version of downtown Toronto populated by Goth fashion, billboards for The Dark Knight, and – most impressively of all – younger, wide-eyed versions of themselves, accomplished through a combination of body doubles, ingeniously–edited archival footage, and meticulously recreated sets. The scenes where the older and younger pairings almost come into contact, combining old and new footage shot nearly two decades apart and skillfully spliced together, are a fist-pumping triumph.
The movie’s mischievous plot involves not only fetch quests to try to return to 2025, but the hilarious horrors of alternate timelines and even stranger publicity ploys whose staging blurs the lines between fiction and reality. All the while, the story’s emotional core pivots around the now forty-something Johnson and McCaroll coming within inches of their past selves, and in the process, reflecting on this timeline’s Obama-era, iPhone 3G optimism – not to mention the limitless promise of being able to self-distribute video content for the first time. This is in sharp contrast to their many regrets and failures during the intervening years. Much like the recent Jackass Forever, it’s a prank film about the passage of time, told with the same scrappy DIY sensibility as the original web series, albeit with Johnson employing more crash zooms and rapid movements to emphasize both comedic and dramatic moments.
Will this peek into the past finally convince McCaroll that he’s better off without his over-enthusiastic, man-child bestie? In Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, quite literally anything is possible, including the production improvising entire plot developments around a real shooting outside the home of Toronto rapper Drake. It’s ambitious and audacious, to say the least.
Each roguish set piece remains grounded in the emotional dynamic of its leads, who – despite their jejune conduct and sensibilities – imbue these broad, middle-aged-loser versions of themselves with genuine pathos. The movie’s mockumentary style, whose aesthetics are hilariously adjusted for each era, harbors both the daring realism of an elaborate hoax as well as the gooey “aw, shucks” melodrama of two men realizing how much they need each other. It’s a pitch-perfect medley of styles and a nonstop hoot with a crowd.
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