Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, 2026.
Directed by Matt Johnson.
Starring Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol
SYNOPSIS:
When their plan to book a show at the Rivoli goes horribly wrong, Matt and Jay accidentally travel back to the year 2008. Blah blah blah.
“You don’t notice getting older when you have a good friend”. That is something along the lines of what was said to co-writer/director/star Matt Johnson, playing a version of himself in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. One gets the sense that such a strong friendship, personally and creatively with co-writer/co-star Jay McCarrol, is what has taken this duo to, well, a band, a web series show, and now a feature-length, sidesplittingly, brilliantly funny buddy comedy mockumentary.
Without any prior knowledge of the shenanigans these two have been up to with this concept, all one can say is that Matt and Jay (with a friendship (one reminiscent of a cross between the antics found in Wayne’s World and Beavis and Butthead) are in a band (the former doing vocals, the latter on piano), desperately trying anything they can to get booked to play a gig at the Toronto-based Rivoli. We see one of those plans fail, only for the film to inform us that 17 years have passed.
But by God, Matt and Jay are still trying to live their dream!
The next plan: The Seventh Inning Skydive. It’s a plan founded on the supremely dangerous, supremely stupid idea of bungee jumping off of the Toronto SkyDome into the Rogers Centre where Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays happen to be playing, parachuting onto the diamond during the celebratory seventh-inning stretch, which Matt, apparently, believes will make them look so cool that the concert hall venue will have no choice but to phone them and book them. This, too, ends in a hilarious disaster, though the interactions with real people along the way are similarly amusing, some of whom are privy to the plan and openly say it’s not a good idea.
Who could blame Jay for getting sick of this shit and wondering if he would have become famous on his own? Thanks to an unbelievably ridiculous inadvertent activation of a time machine by Matt, who was trying to rip off Back to the Future for his next scheme, he and Jay are going to get a taste of different realities for them and the band, which will test their friendship and whether it can be repaired. Like everything else here, nearly every sequence perfectly walks that line between stupidly and brilliantly uproarious. Even the jokes that border on tasteless or offensive, such as a 9/11 one, are deployed with such whipsmart precision to make them work.
At one point, Matt Johnson breaks the fourth wall, exclaiming that if you are watching this in a theater, it will probably be for the only time, given the copyright nightmare the making of this film must have provided. Following a roadshow release last year, it is now, somehow, getting a traditional release. It should not be skipped. Typically, several comedies quickly run their course and stop being as funny as when they started once the audience has a grasp of the plot and where certain situations are headed.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie maintains that momentum until its genuinely exciting DIY spectacle of a climax, all while going all out selling the look and feel of the time travel element (whether it be getting the cameraman following them around with an older model, or copious amounts of pop culture references, one of them taking place inside a movie theater setting up a killer punchline). It’s a joke operating on several levels, from being funny to commenting on past entertainment culture to signalling something good to the audience, all blending together for an unforgettable laugh.
Even if one is unfamiliar with this duo, it will probably come as no surprise that their comedic chemistry together is an on-point, witty, irreverent delight. Again, what is impressive is how often these jokes land and how consistently funny Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is, practically shaking up the dynamic of this friendship across time travel with a new approach roughly every 20 minutes. This is one hell of an evolution of their act, in comedy, craft, and ambition. Good friends they are indeed.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder
