| My first introduction to Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie was when it was announced for the Toronto International Film Festival and everyone who had already seen it at SXSW called it the funniest film ever. That’s quite the selling point. However, the second piece of information is that it’s based off a web series called Nirvanna the Band the Show, which I had never heard of. So I was a little apprehensive with no idea what I was getting myself into, which I think is going to be true for most of the audience. | | 2025
Directed by: Matt Johnson
Screenplay by: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol
Starring: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol
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This is vying for most divisive film of the year, so very appropriate that it’s releasing the same weekend as Wuthering Heights which is also vying for that same title. Nirvanna is undoubtedly funny, but as the many, many people who walked out of my showing less than 10 minutes into it can attest to, it is also a profoundly weird and chaotic movie. It’s part Borat, and as Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol (who play a version of themselves) would like me to say, part Back to the Future too.
But we’re starting with the part-Borat element since that is easier to explain. Starting in 2008, shot in mockumentary, hand-held camcorder style, Matt and Jay document their plans to book a gig at the Rivoli (a real club in Toronto) for their band called, you guessed it, Nirvanna the Band. My favourite part of the movie also happens to be their most elaborate (filming wise) scheme to get famous and the one that occurs first in the movie. They’re going to parachute off the top of the CN Tower and into the SkyDome while the Toronto Blue Jays are playing a baseball game. Why I compare this to Borat is while they’re preparing their stunt, they go into a hardware store to buy a pair of scissors “to cut through a cable anchoring them on the skywalk on the CN Tower” and the real employee gets to stare at them in disbelief and tell them that sounds like a very bad idea. And along with all the tourists at the CN Tower, wait in line with parachutes “hidden” under their jackets and then explain to the real security guard why they need pliers with them. Throughout this entire sequence, I am laughing and also squirming at the thought of how insane of a plan this is. But mostly I was thinking about every single real person on the street watching this going on and trying to decide if they need to call the police, if these guys are legitimate, or if they’re just going to ignore it and go about their day. I wish I was in Toronto when they were filming this.
That is just the opening hook for the movie. Everybody who walked out made the right call for themselves: if you don’t like it in the first 10 minutes, you’re not going to suddenly start to like it. After that opening, then it becomes part Back to the Future. And it becomes even more chaotic. There is one sub-plot, echoing the shooting at Drake’s Toronto mansion in 2024, which is a lot of fun, and certainly the end which brings the whole move full circle to where it began, but the rest of it can get weird and chaotic in a boring way.
While I do think Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie will be divisive, I am firmly in the middle. I understand the people who think it’s insanely creative and hilarious, I also understand the people who walked out (easily the most number of walk-outs I have ever seen in a theater).
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