For the awards people, BlackBerry put Matt Johnson on the map. It’s Canada’s Social Network, and a great story of a rise and fall from grace. Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie could have been Johnson’s personal Blackberry, a risky follow up from a creative triumph. But instead, he takes his hyper meta web/TV series and wonderfully adapts it to the big screen. Even without Canada’s finest Jay Baruchel, probably off filming Goon 3.
Johnson and his pal Jay McCarrol are Nirvanna the Band (I chuckle every time). They so badly want to play Toronto’s Rivoli that they’ll try almost anything to play their Community World Theater. Their wonderfully ludicrous plan fails, forcing Jay to really have second thoughts about staying with Matt & the band. So much so, that he takes their RV to an open mic night…not realizing Matt was asleep in the back…spilling Orbitz in the “flux capacitor” circuitry…which takes the pair back to 2008, the day they planned their first scheme to try to play the Rivoli.
Nirvanna The Movie is one of the great spins on the mockumentary format. Most movie versions make that gimmick the point like Borat, using awkward human encounters as the main attractions for a flimsy story. Not so here. Johnson knows most normal Canadians would be too nice to ever give appalled reactions and would instead opt for decent and sweet…but forgettable. So the boys switch the goal: their creative juices go towards building out a tale and using any reactions they get as a bonus. That means we get a truly stellar psychotic meta time travel movie really amusingly thought out. Johnson and McCarrol took the beats of Back to the Future and rebuilt them with the stupidest low stakes concept of two guys trying to play at the Rivoli Theater in Toronto. That means all funny, early and often. The expected “time travel realization” scene is definitely something you’ve never seen before…and had me dying laughing in my theater. The movie plays chicken with copyright infringement/plagiarism so much that you’ll be wondering how the movie didn’t receive cease and desist letters from Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox. But it’s not full theft: the changes made fit Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie The Screenplay magnificently, and will have you giggling along as you see Matt and Jay go back and forth in time, changing their futures along the way.
The budget for this film was $2 Million. Decent, but not exactly Robert Zemeckis money. And yet, while you’re laughing, Johnson and McCarrol will shock you at how much they pull off here. I have no idea how they filmed that opening scene, that prominently uses VERY famous Toronto places and should have landed both of them in prison. The Back to the Future stuff, if you know the movie, is just as impressive with their version of the “10:04 PM” sequence. On the whole, the guys shot permit less, using a shooting near Drake’s house or a the Eras Tour to their advantage, adapting their story on the fly, to get what they need and have it look shockingly legible for such a small budget and a myriad of legal complications that they somehow avoided to bring us this little gem.
No one should ever attempt their own Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. What Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol pulled off here is nothing short of a miracle, with no one getting sued, hurt, killed, or sent back in time. Or…maybe this really happened? I mean, how else could Jay and Matt have avoided all their legal downfalls this expertly? Where they’re going…they won’t need representation.
PS: Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie The Trailer is here, but don’t watch it, as the movie is best going in cold.