Nirvanna the Band the Show is the rockumentary series for movie nerds. Starting as a webseries in 2007, it followed director Matt Johnson and musician Jay McCarrol as fictionalized versions of themselves, members of a band (confusingly called Nirvanna the Band, no relation) who undergo increasingly more complicated schemes to try and book a show at the Rivoli in Toronto. Episodes parodied everything from Lost to Jurassic Park, and went so far as to use whole tracks from the score of the inspirations (an element that almost put the kibosh on the release of the upcoming feature film).
In 2017, Vice aired a TV version of the series executive produced by Spike Jonze that took the show to even loftier heights. For example, in an episode parodying Daredevil, Matt goes blind from watching Star Wars too close to the TV screen, so when they bring their camera crew into the actual Toronto opening night of The Force Awakens, they get kicked out for talking. Now, 18 years after the web series first aired, the boys are back for one more adventure, and it takes everything to the absolute limit, morphing a cult classic franchise into a time travel story that rivals Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is directed (again) by Matt Johnson, who has since established himself as a proper feature director. In fact, one episode of the Vice series was filmed when he took his first feature, Operation Avalanche, to Sundance. But this movie takes him back to his roots in more ways than one. It opens in 2008, with a classic Nirvanna Scheme involving flyers, before flashing forward to 2025, where the schemes are getting so complicated they involve smuggling wire cutters into the CN Tower and attempting to skydive off of it.
When that plan fails, Matt decides to stage a fake time machine to convince everyone he’s from the past, but in a freak accident, he accidentally transports himself and Jay back to 2008. Most of the fun of watching Nirvanna the Band the Show is trying to suss out what is real and what is staged, Borat-style, and that gets even crazier in the movie, especially when old footage from the web series is blended with new footage filmed with vintage cameras, including a heist where 2025 Matt and Jay try to sneak into the apartment of 2008 Matt and Jay.
So much of the story feels like it’s happening in the moment, but the script is incredibly tight. The plot goes full Back to the Future/Back to the Future Part II, with elements of The Butterfly Effect: They go back in time, change something, go back to 2025 to find something completely different, and then have to clamor to put things back the way they were. But the true genius is shown through how many small moments are reincorporated throughout. This is a movie with a Chekhov’s parachute, Chekhov’s pliers, and a Chekhov’s Nintendo 64, all leading to an emotional climax that made me cry almost as much as I did watching Hamnet earlier that day— a fitting farewell to the characters I’ve known for almost a decade now.
While Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is made for those who love the band and the show, you absolutely can just tune in for the movie knowing nothing about either. Thanks to its time travel element, it works as both a retrospective and recap, while also poking fun at how their humor has evolved since they started their creative partnership. This duo has always asked the question of, “What if Nathan Fielder was an ambitious band kid?” and in this movie we get our answer through Tom Cruise-esque stunts and ridiculous moments of self-reflection and self-parody in the same breath. If we never see these characters again, at least they got to go out on their own terms: with a scheme unlike any we’ve seen before.
