Nirvanna: The Band - The Show - The Movie (15)

Best friends Matt and Jay have harboured dreams of playing a concert together at The Rivoli music venue in their home city for the best part of two decades. Jay finally loses hope but Matt hatches an outlandish plan to convert the RV in their backyard into a time machine so they can convince the people of Toronto that they are bona fide time travellers. Except the ludicrous scheme works and the vehicle jumps back to 2008 when the speed reaches 88mph.

LondonNet Film Review

Nirvanna: The Band – The Show – The Movie (15) Film Review from LondonNet

In Back To The Future, which is lovingly referenced in Matt Johnson’s hare-brained mockumentary, Doc Brown adapts a DMC DeLorean into a time machine with a flux capacitor so when the acceleration reaches 88 miles per hour, he and Marty McFly can turn back the clock 30 years. Nirvanna: The Band – The Show – The Movie gleefully defies the same laws of rationality and physics with a poorly maintained RV on the streets of Toronto and clocks up an impressive rate of guffaws per minute. To echo Marty’s delight when he returns to Hill Valley: Everything looks great…

Best friends Matt (Johnson) and Jay (Jay McCarrol) have harboured dreams of playing a concert together at The Rivoli music venue in their home city for the best part of two decades. For their latest attempt at self-promotion to secure the gig, the double-act decide to skydive off the top of the CN Tower into the Rogers Centre stadium through the retractable roof. Hidden camera footage captures the pair buying pliers at a hardware store. “Be careful man,” remarks a nervous sales assistant after he learns Matt intends to use the tool to cut through the safety harness of the hands-free walk on the CN Tower roof. “I really don’t think it’s worth it.”

The vertiginous escapade almost ends in disaster and Jay finally loses hope. However, Matt persists and hatches an outlandish plan to convert the RV in their backyard into a time machine so they can convince the people of Toronto that they are bona fide time travellers. Except the ludicrous scheme works, the vehicle jumps back to 2008 when the speed reaches 88mph, and a hilariously discombobulated Matt and Jay encounter their younger selves, which creates ripples in the past that could have cataclysmic repercussions in the present.

Nirvanna: The Band – The Show – The Movie incorporates archive footage from the duo’s 2007 web series, which was shot on mini DV tapes and presented in a different screen ratio. This fusion of old and new, stitched together by Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch, allows the hapless heroes to coexist with their fresh faced selves, blatantly ignoring Doc Brown’s warnings about a paradox that could unravel the space-time continuum. The aesthetic is DIY and polished at the same time, sparing us of digital visual effects to pull off the illusion of two misfits accidentally travelling back three decades to re-experience early iPhone mania and billboards of Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight.

From the opening scene, this is a delightfully unhinged underdog story, anchored by the double-decker delusions of Johnson and McCarrol’s pals for life. Hysteria moshes with heartwarming sentiment and we root for these misguided dreamers every faltering step of the way.

– Kim Hu