Review: ‘Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie’ puts on a fast-moving showcase of guerrilla-style tomfoolery
2025 / Dir. Matt Johnson
☆ 4/5
Watch if you like: a 2000s Canadian hipster version of Borat remaking Back to the Future, where you’re forced to confront whether you’ve wasted the last 20 years of your life. But it’s funny.
This review is based on an advanced screening held at the Music Box Theatre on December 5, 2025, and may not reflect the final feature release.
Combining scripted sequences with improvisational candid segments with unsuspecting people on the streets of Toronto, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie follows two doofuses who accidentally create a time machine using an expired can of long-discontinued drink Orbitz in their quest to get their band to play a trendy Toronto nightclub.
This fast-moving comedy is based on a cult web series from the 2000s as well as a short-lived continuation/reboot on Viceland (remember when Vice had a TV channel for a couple of years?). I’d never heard of it, and had no trouble watching the movie, but the pre-screening I saw was filled with people in costume carrying props, and one of those fun moments in life where you find yourself immersed in a vibrant fandom you know nothing about.
The basic schtick is that Matt and Jay dream of having their band play Toronto’s Rivoli club. Instead of actually writing songs, they turn to increasingly elaborate and stupid stunts that never go right. We begin with one of them where, without having to explain too many Toronto locations, they want to parachute off a tall tower and interrupt a sports game, only to be foiled by the stadium’s retractable dome.
Their shenanigans are filmed guerrilla-style without permits, and often with real people unexpectedly shaping the narrative. One of the funniest scenes is the duo visiting a hardware store and getting help from a sales clerk who tells them that he’s a libertarian and believes they have the freedom to go through with their plan, but also that they’re totally idiotic for doing it. Elsewhere, there are drunk tourists, inept security guards, and random raccoons that are never the butt of a mean-spirited joke, but they make this a truly unique movie with a real-life Looney Tunes vibe. Other than when the two are by themselves, you also have the feeling that you never know who is in on it or not, which makes what otherwise would be a pretty slight, straightforward comedic parody quite fascinating.
Their foiled stadium-parachute plan leads directly into a time-machine caper that hilariously borrows liberally from Back to the Future, The Butterfly Effect, and a bit of Bill & Ted, taking them back to 2008, when the web series began. With a limited budget, they recreate 2008 by cleverly editing in old footage they shot, creating a unique meta-commentary on how we’re often stuck with the choices we made when we were young, yet they make us who we are today.
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is sure to please returning fans and marks a great entry point for people like me, unfamiliar with Matt and Jay’s tomfoolery. It’s a welcome return to an era of more innocent 2000s internet comedy before the current glut of stand-up bro podcasts, created in a DIY spirit that shows you can still be creative in a world of AI and endless corporate IP mergers.