Alright, let’s do the professional thing and start with some disclosure: I’ve been a Matt Johnson fan since The Dirties, I’ve interviewed him multiple times (the search button is your friend), and I was well-versed in the source material on which this film is based (both the original web series and the Viceland run). Take whatever I’m about to say with the appropriate grain of salt, although I genuinely don’t think my affection for Johnson’s work is doing much heavy lifting here, because Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is one of the most purely enjoyable comedies I’ve seen in years.
The premise, for the uninitiated: Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol (both playing exaggerated versions of themselves) have spent the better part of two decades trying to book a gig at the Rivoli, a Toronto rock club with a capacity of around 200 people. Rather than taking the obvious approach of calling the venue or actually rehearsing a set, they’ve devoted those years to an escalating series of elaborate, attention-grabbing stunts, the theory being that if enough people believe they’re playing the Rivoli, the club will eventually have no choice but to put them on the bill. It hasn’t worked yet, and as the film opens, Jay’s patience for this strategy — and for Matt — is finally running out.
What follows is difficult to describe without spoiling the film’s best surprises, but the broad strokes involve parachutes, the CN Tower, a VHS copy of Back to the Future, and a long-since-discontinued late-90s novelty drink called Orbitz. Johnson has always been comfortable operating in the space between genuine documentary and elaborately staged fiction, and the film’s first act, in which Matt and Jay attempt to talk their way past CN Tower security with parachutes strapped to their backs and pliers in their pockets, is a perfect encapsulation of why that approach works so well. You’re watching something that appears to be actually happening, and the gap between how blasé the security guards seem and how objectively insane the situation is generates the kind of low-key absurdist comedy that Johnson has always thrived on.
The “how did they pull this off?” quality carries over into the film’s Back to the Future-inspired time travel conceit, which sends present-day Matt and Jay back to 2008. Navigating the city with period-appropriate consumer-grade cameras in tow (a logistical choice that’s both clever worldbuilding and a practical solution to the challenge of integrating new footage with archival material from the original web series), they set about to undo their mistake and get themselves back to the present day. The compositing work required to put the 2025 versions of these guys in scenes alongside their 2008 counterparts is genuinely impressive, not to mention frequently hilarious. It probably bears mentioning that Back to the Future is my favorite film of all time, so a comedy that riffs on its structure with this much intelligence and affection was probably always going to work for me, but I’d like to think Johnson and McCarrol earn it regardless.
Elevating the film above the inherent goofiness of its premise is how it treats the friendship at its center. The series has always been about Matt and Jay’s relationship as much as it’s been about their increasingly elaborate schemes, and the time travel conceit gives the film a surprisingly melancholy dimension: the chance to see what might have been, and what might still be lost. Jay’s question of whether this lifelong partnership has actually been holding him back gives the second half a surprising bit of emotional weight, and Johnson strikes a careful balance without allowing sentimentality to overwhelm the gags.
All told, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is an absolute blast: a scrappy, inventive, genuinely funny film that rewards both newcomers (my wife had never seen a single minute of the series and still laughed her ass off right next to me) and longtime fans. Prior familiarity with the series adds a layer of richness, particularly during the 2008 sequences, but you don’t really need it. You just need to show up willing to go wherever Johnson and McCarrol are taking you. They’ve been on this particular road for nearly twenty years now, and they’ve never been better company.