Michael Fairbanks
I have often struggled with the broad comedy sensibilities that seem to be the most popular these days. Tim Robinson’s awkward calamities in I Think You Should Leave and Friendship are just obnoxious noise to me. Connor O’Malley’s viral sketches and shorts are nonsensical just for the sake of it. It’s all so cynically engineered to be shared in microscopic Twitter clips and indicative of a society that has completely lost touch with how to relate to regular people. Given that this is based on Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll’s web series and effusive hype out of festivals that would champion Robinson or O’Malley, I was very worried that Nirvanna: The Band – the Show – the Movie would be nearly unwatchable to me. Well, as it turns out, this is loud and dumb comedy done right. Merging a Bill & Ted style time travel plot with widely inventive (and illegal) guerrilla style stunts is inspired. It also has a real emotional core. A loving ode to local artists who never stop trying to break out.
Johnson (who also directs) and McCarroll play heightened versions of themselves. They’ve been in a band since their teenage years but have yet to score a gig at local venue The Rivoli. Matt has concocted numerous absurd schemes in order to get noticed, including the film’s wild opening Mission: Impossible level stunt that appears to have been captured on the fly in camera, but nothing has worked. Desperate, he rewatches Back To The Future and is somehow able to reconstruct the Delorian’s time machine in their RV. While this mad science is happening, Jay very easily books an out of town solo gig by making a phone call. He plans to sneak away from Matt and perform but that morning, Matt takes jay for a spin and the boys end up getting sent back to 2008. From there, the usual shenanigans of the genre ensue as the citizens of Toronto look on.
Prank movies usually make very little if any effort to make the audience care about the characters. They are punching bags. Excuses for the actors involved to test their death wish. Nirvanna: The Band – the Show – the Movie has a refreshing amount of time for this central friendship. Matt & Jay share an easy and clearly authentic chemistry that allows them to perfectly realize these classic comedic archetypes. Since Matt is such a loose cannon, he could’ve easily been annoying, but Johnson roots him in such an earnest desire to make it big with his best buddy that you can never stay mad at him. Jay is more of a mellow straight man but eventually his ambitions of a solo career bubble up in a very funny way that allows him to come out of his shell a bit.
The pranks and stunts in Nirvanna: The Band – the Show – the Movie are less about bothering people (although there’s a bit of that, one hardware store employee demonstrates saintly patience with Matt) and more about simply performing in public. At times these sequences play out like street performances where the actors will call mall or park goers over just to observe the chaos. They’re not fishing for reactions. The absurdity naturally pulls them out. The only major drawback to this approach is that it never truly feels like we’ve gone back to 2008. A movie theater marquee shows Hancock and Hellboy 2 The Golden Army and the memorabilia in the duo’s childhood hangout spot is period accurate but otherwise, we are clearly still looking at 2020s Toronto. Even so, I don’t think it would’ve been worth it to go scripted. Even with Johnson’s experience directing narrative features like Blackberry and the upcoming Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony It would’ve felt a bit too rehearsed. Like these guys were trying overtime to convince us that we should come along on this adventure. Here, we’re along for the ride whether we like it or not.
Nirvanna: The Band – the Show – the Movie is a stunning achievement of indie filmmaking. So much so that at one point Johnson breaks the 4fourth wall to let us know that he cannot believe that we are watching this in a movie theater right now. Completely untethered to what is permissible or even legal, Johnson and McCarroll cement their online personas into genuine film characters with far more success than many sketch comedians who have made this attempt. It is a film that will inspire others to take bold swings in their early features that will somehow come together in post. In a time where filmmaking is somehow more and less accessible than ever, it feels like a downright miracle.
