Lots of great things come out of Canada: William Shatner, Jim Carrey, the Barenaked Ladies, maple syrup, virtually every Sci-Fi Original TV series to come out of the 1990s. Add to that list the comic duo of Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, the minds behind the web series, then sitcom “Nirvanna the Band the Show,” which styled them as a pair of dimwitted musicians with a curious musical act that largely consists of McCarrol plinking away on the piano while the giddy, manic Johnson improvises over top. Their greatest shot at fame, in their eyes, is booking a gig at the famed Rivoli music venue in Toronto, Canada; the main gag of the show, of course, was that they never thought to actually call the venue to try and secure a date. Instead, what we saw was a dizzying mix of Tom Green-style pseudo-real pranksterism, improvisation, and sight gags fitting the manchildren the pair both embodied and lampooned.
The show became a cult hit, but was quickly lost to time; luckily, 17 years into their journey, writer-director Johnson (who also gave us the underrated “BlackBerry“) returns with “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie,” a film not just about reviving a years-old comedy act for the big screen, nor an ode to the curious bonds we form and fracture among lifelong friends and collaborators, but a tribute to Toronto and the Canadian spirit. It’s also an early contender for the funniest and most charming movie of the year.
You see, Matt and Jay never gave up on their journey to book the Rivoli, despite their increasingly desperate bids to attract attention rather than, you know, build their repertoire beyond Matt’s breathless riffing. The cameras may have upgraded a bit—cameraman Jared Raab works with fancy HD cameras now, a far cry from the blurry 4:3 DV camcorders we see in the film’s flashbacks to the era of the webseries—but their attitudes stay stuck in the past, as seen in the thrilling opening act involving a gambit to skydive off Toronto’s gargantuan CN Tower into the SkyDome.
What follows is just the start of how many “how did they pull this off?” moments, as we follow Matt and Jay guerrilla-style as they interact with everyone from unsuspecting hardware store employees (one reacts to their plan with a libertarian’s sense of freedom, mixed with humanist caution) to CN Tower security who think nothing of the parachutes on their backs and pliers on their person. “They’re for cutting pants.” What happens after that beggars belief and is best left to the imagination, but it sets the tone for the kind of whirlwind creativity “Nirvanna” gets up to in its brisk 100 minutes.
But the real meat of the story, in classic stunted-millennial fashion, involves a time-travel gambit inspired by a VHS tape of “Back to the Future” and the intervention of obscure Canadian beverage Orbitz (“A bolt of lightning in every bottle”), which inadvertently zaps our heroes back to 2008 and gives them the chance to explore what might have been. For Matt, it’s “what if we did it right from the beginning?” But for Jay, it’s “What was I doing wasting my life with this loser in the first place?” The butterfly-effect from these decisions puts the back half of “Nirvanna” in a much more melancholic direction, as the two friends see precisely what would happen to them if they let go of their toxic, codependent dynamic. There are flashes of “Popstar” in the gentle lampooning of modern music industry press tours, fan interactions, and more, as we see how getting exactly what you asked for may be the worst thing to happen to you.
That core of sincerity, hidden among all the ripped jeans and goofy antics and shockingly dark jokes about late-aughts pop culture (cue the transgressive references to dated songs, slurs, and canceled pop culture figures who become the first clues that they’ve traveled to the past), is what keeps “Nirvanna” from crumbling under the weight of its own ambition. And ambitious it is; the whole film feels scrappy, and not just in its man-on-the-street pranksterism but in the ways its expertly-deployed special effects and compositing work make the film feel bigger than it is. (Its odes to “Back to the Future” are many and deliberate, right down to composer McCarrol aping the bombastic rhythms of Alan Silvestri’s score as Matt and Jay scramble their way through Toronto to fix things.)
And yet, at the end of the day, “Nirvanna” keeps its focus firmly on Matt and Jay, and their deeply Canadian way of solving their problems. Their chemistry is undeniable, the kind of bond that forms between childhood friends who become collaborators as adults. Jay plays the perfect, weary straight man to Matt’s pinballing imagination and lack of inhibition. The time-travel and drifting priorities match the kind of journey many folks go through as they approach middle age, wondering whether the people who’ve stuck by them are actually holding them back. Every throwaway gag—Matt’s frenzied shout of “o-BAMNA,” Jay’s digs at Matt’s fluctuating weight over the decades—feels informed by that connection. These aren’t two guys indulging in empty nostalgia, but interrogating and embracing their love for what they love, and the ways in which it holds them back.
Crucially, what they love most, as seen in every frame of this, is Canada, as captured by Johnson and Raab’s roving camera. The Toronto streets, the venues, the pop culture figures, the controversies (get ready for a Jian Ghomeshi jumpscare early on), all of it elevates the typical white-guys-realizing-they’ve-wasted-their-lives comedy into something more culturally specific and idiosyncratic. All while delivering the kind of out-there gags that, God willing, will elicit actual gasps from their sheer chutzpah. It’s movies like these that prove that cinema still has the capacity to surprise, even in criminally goofy comedies like this.
