By Byron Smith
Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a film that, by all reasonable logic, should not exist. So it’s almost a miracle that it’s arrived on our shores here in Australia.
Born from an internet video series in the early days of online video around 2007, later becoming a cult-hit Vice TV series in 2017, the franchise now makes the improbable leap to the big screen.
I am too young to have witnessed the show’s rise to cult status in the late 2000s and was previously unaware of the duo as a Canadian comedy staple, so I was going into the cinema completely blind.
The film serves as an unashamed love letter to Back to the Future, borrowing the flux capacitor, the 88m/h threshold, and entire uncut clips from Robert Zemeckis’ classic which I feel blended well into the main story.
Obviously, the film is chock-full of copyrighted material, so it’s incredible how the film managed to clear so many legal hurdles to be published globally.
The film’s director and co-star Matt Johnson told Page Six: “People who are watching in theatres had better thank their lucky stars, because it’s probably the only time it’s going to be screened, ever.”
The editing is excellent, with previously unused footage from the original series interwoven with new material seamlessly.
When the humour lands, it lands hard, and the audience I watched with laughed hysterically throughout, proving the show’s fanbase stretches further than you might expect.
That said, being completely clueless to the source material did mean some jokes flew over my head.
The pacing also falters, feeling stop-and-start at times and losing steam in the final 30 minutes.
Despite its faults, and the lack of knowledge I had of the source material going in, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a genuinely fun and audacious piece of filmmaking that everyone should go out and see at least once.
Rating: ★★★★
Featured image: Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol return as the world’s least productive band in their feature film debut. Photo: YouTube
