Nate At The Movies

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie was the third film of my historic film-watching weekend, and it was the one that popped up on my radar the latest. It’s 4.4 rating on Letterboxd was striking, to say the least, and the trailer looked funny, so I drove all the way to Denton to see it—that was the closest theater showing it, somehow. After driving back to Fort Worth and thinking about this movie the whole way, I think I would’ve driven (drove? drived?) even further to catch this masterpiece in theaters, the way these absolute geniuses intended.

Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol knocked just about every aspect of this movie out of the park, but I’ll start with the comedy. The humor was relentless and meta and stupid and clever at the same time, and the gags were amazing. From the flashbacks including things that weren’t said the first time to how Matt and Jay separately figured out that they had traveled back to 2008, basically every joke hit for me. I spent most of my drive home trying to remember as many jokes as I could—and I may include a list at the end of this review for posterity—but I loved the “copyright nightmare” fourth wall break, the “clean 80s rap song”, and “maybe that’s my sensitivity”, among others. I’ll be sitting here all night trying to remember these jokes; they were just that funny.

Aside from the dialogical humor and visual gags, the plot of this movie was just as insane, and the hybrid Guerilla-mockumentary filmmaking style employed here made each moment even better. Was this staged? Was this real? Honestly, the more Guerilla this was, the more admiration I have for this absolute feat of filmmaking. The CN Tower sequence right at the beginning set the tone for the crazy to follow, and every time Matt and Jay pulled in unwilling strangers was fantastic.

If anything, that would probably be my one criticism: I could have used more bystander involvement. There was a good bit, but the set narrative took over at times and didn’t let strangers get involved. I quite enjoyed that narrative, though, because I love Back to the Future and appreciated not only how strictly they followed that film’s rules here, but how they broke away from that movie as well. This was a movie that required its viewers to have some tread on their cinematic tires, and it paid off big time, even if I hadn’t seen The Hangover.

Somehow, amidst all the hilarity and peril, Matt and Jay found time to weave in a touching little story about best friendship, regret, and following dreams. While many of those more emotional moments were accompanied by laughter in the theater—as we had been conditioned to do—they were still quite sweet, especially at the end. I love the idea of this huge, insane thing happening to them and then them getting the chance to try all of the stuff from the beginning again with their new knowledge. It made me want to watch the original show more than anything, which I could very well see happening.

I’m glad that I could make fourth-wall-breaking Matt in the movie happy by seeing Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie in theaters, and what a surprise this one was! This was hilarious, endlessly creative and inventive, meta and tongue-in-cheek while also containing a huge amount of heart, and neatly paced and packed into an impressive 102 minutes. I meant it when I said that Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie was a feat of filmmaking. Between the bonkers story, the Guerilla filmmaking (on a $2 million budget, no less), and the crazy consistent comedy, this movie was an absolute miracle. I can’t wait to show it to other people, even if they’ll miss out on the theatrical aspect of this achievement of film.