Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie
You don’t have to know beans about Canadian favorite Nirvanna the Band the Show to have a blast with Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.
Directed, co-written by and starring Matt Johnson — aka “the goofy, headband-wearing guy from BlackBerry,” a film that he likewise directed and co-wrote — the feature-length expansion sets a high bar for comedies in 2026 with its imaginative homage to Back to the Future and loving tribute to male friendships.
Via fictional versions of themselves, Johnson and co-writer/co-star Jay McCarrol throw viewers right in the middle of Nirvanna the Band’s comically inept attempts to play legendary Toronto performance venue The Rivoli in 2008. Based simply on Matt’s crazy schemes and Jay’s skeptical but nevertheless accepting responses, it's easy to buy into the roommates’ appealing dynamic and sit back and chow down on popcorn while their ill-conceived ideas unspool.
That such antics would be tolerated for a long time by Jay is perhaps less believable, and we indeed find him worn a bit thin 17 years later as he goes along with Matt’s most ambitious/foolish plan yet — one involving skydiving off the CN tower, a sequence that Johnson and his team enact through shockingly convincing trickery.
In the aftermath, Jay’s comparably shortsighted efforts to achieve independence likewise go horribly wrong. While it's easy to go with the flow and accept Canadian lore that's key to this bizarre journey (e.g. the short-lived Orbitz fruit drink), viewers should probably be familiar with Back to the Future to get proper mileage out of the plot once our heroes unwittingly carry out their own version of Marty McFly’s and Doc Brown’s story.
Captured through Borat-like pseudo-documentary filmmaking with innocent bystanders gamely playing along as the band's camera-wielding friends tag along and capture everything across multiple timelines, the chaos rolls out non-stop as an increasingly panicked Matt and Jay hilariously attempt to right their wrongs.
In the process, some unexpectedly powerful moments of humanity arise, making Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie far more impactful and potentially lasting than the average comedy, even the very good ones.
O Canada, indeed!
Grade: A-minus. Rated R.
(Photo: Neon)
