SXSW Review: ‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ is Lightning in a Bottle

The 1990s animated series Pinky and the Brain featured a signature catchphrase that essentially summarized its every episode: “the same thing we do every night: try to take over the world.” That premise and similar setups require suspension of disbelief, but most people don’t watch TV or movies so that they can feel as if what’s happening on screen is entirely realistic. Take Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, which finds its characters having the same conversation every day for seventeen years in a row until one hairbrained scheme actually works. It might be absurd, but it does lead to what is undeniably one of the most entertaining experiences audiences will have this year at the movies.

In 2008, Matt (Matt Johnson) goes over the plan with Jay (Jay McCarrol) for them to perform that evening as Nirvanna the Band at the Rivoli, a popular music venue in Toronto. While Matt is sure this is going to be the night, fast-forward to 2025 and he’s still scribbling outlandish ideas on the whiteboard. When their latest effort – skydiving from the top of the CN Tower into a stadium to publicize a show they haven’t even booked – fails, Jay decides it’s time to try for a solo career. What he doesn’t know is that Matt is asleep in the back of the RV he’s driving to Montreal, and that the RV has now become a time machine that’s programmed to take them back to 2008.

The story behind this project is almost as insane as the movie itself. The scenes of Matt and Jay in 2008 are taken from their web series Nirvanna the Band the Show, and footage was meticulously analyzed to try to create something that could be used to shape and fit the narrative of this film. Johnson’s success as director of BlackBerry apparently gave him enough credibility and leeway to do whatever he wanted for his next film, and this astonishing effort contains some truly daring and wild scenes that shouldn’t be spoiled. The mere fact that they got made without everyone involved getting into trouble with authorities – or ending up dead – is a miracle, and audiences will benefit tremendously from those high-stakes risks and ludicrous ideas.

What’s especially great about this film is that Matt and Jay spend so much time talking about what they’re going to do that they never actually do anything, and there’s so little music actually featured. But they are best friends and, much as Jay can’t stand Matt and is willing to consider what life would look like without him eternally ranting by his side, they do better when they’re together. That doesn’t make their antics any more organized or coherent, but that’s why this film is what it is. Like their plans to perform at the Rivoli by sheer manifestation, this film shouldn’t work, but everything about it does.

This stream-of-consciousness send-up of Back to the Future makes repeated explicit references to that franchise, serving as both a parody and an homage, with Matt looking directly at the camera to note that viewers will likely be the last ones to ever see this before legal teams get involved based on copyright claims. This is all one big joke that screenwriters Johnson and McCarrol never stop telling, and it’s so easy to get swept along for the ride. This film does so much with so little, and it’s simultaneously entrancing, mystifying, hilarious, and more than a little worrying. This is the purest example of lightning in a bottle, a concept so far-fetched that it couldn’t possibly come together to be entertaining and watchable. Yet every moment of it is, and, provided it doesn’t get edited down due to copyright issues, it’s a film best experienced with the wildest and most engaged audience possible.

Movie Rating: 9/10