10/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars

Every great city has a great television show to accompany it. Chicago has The Bear, New York has Sex and the City, and L.A. has enough great TV shows to power an entire Emmy season. Toronto is different, though. Unless you grew up watching Degrassi, Toronto’s premier show was a little series called Nirvanna The Band The Show. A mockumentary about a Hobo Johnson-esque spoken word duet called “Nirvanna” with writer/director Matt Johnson at the mic and composer Jay McCarrol at the keys, the short-lived Viceland series follows the pair as they try to get a gig at the Rivoli bar by any means necessary. At two seasons and sixteen total episodes, Nirvanna The Band The Show’s abrupt ending left fans hankering for more, which was remedied by the announcement of Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (a real mouthful of a title) in 2023. Now, Toronto’s favorite dynamic duo returns with a vengeance in a victory lap, wholeheartedly indebted to its hometown.

Clearly ripping from time travel comedies like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Back to the Future, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is an upgrade from the series in every conceivable way. It hits the ground running with a setup like every other Nirvanna episode, but Johnson and McCarrol make excellent use of their increased production value. The time travel premise is already entertaining enough, but combining it with the standard Nirvanna premise makes it something entirely new. Their run-and-gun style has always been strangely entertaining to watch, particularly in the episode where Matt and Jay steal a map from the Royal Ontario Museum and run from security down Bloor street, but the two literally take things to new heights in this film. It’s not a movie just to cash in on the show’s initial hype (I’m looking at you, Sex and the City 2), but a genuine improvement in all departments.

Nirvanna The Band The Show has always been a Torontonian series at the forefront, tailor-made for the average citizen while straying from being too inside-baseball for anyone outside of Canada. Aside from the funniest scene in the film taking place in the CN Tower, a pizza box for my favorite spot in town (shoutout North of Brooklyn Pizzeria) is prominently shown in their home, a guy wears a Vinegar Syndrome branded shirt, and a character realizes they’ve time-traveled based on the ads at Yonge–Dundas Square. The time travel jokes are par for the course, such as a Bill Cosby sight gag or a crowd reacting a little too loudly to some dated jokes from The Hangover, but Johnson and McCarrol also take the time to include a gloomy visual reference to the encroaching closure of independent cinemas across Toronto. There’s a true love for the city imbued in Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie.

The Movie carries over that same reverence with an equal measure of insanity, leaving the line between the diegesis completely blurred. Are they actually talking to a real Canadian Tire employee, or is it just an extra casually dropping an all-timer joke? Which of their antics are in the real world with hidden cameras, and which ones are elaborately staged? Maybe I’m just dumb as a bag of rocks, but I think not being able to discern fact from fiction is part of the Nirvanna The Band The Show course. Johnson and McCarrol pick up where they left off so effortlessly that Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie feels like no time has passed whatsoever, even if that’s the whole point.

Figuratively and literally time-travelling back to their online origins in 2008, Johnson and McCarrol infuse Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie with an emotional hook that the show never had. As juvenile as Johnson and McCarrol’s humor is, there’s a strong emphasis on the fact that Johnson and McCarrol have been doing Nirvanna The Band The Show for seventeen years. They’ve collaborated on three feature films between the original Nirvanna web series and The Movie: The Dirties, Operation: Avalanche, and Blackberry, with Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie feeling like a blank-check scheme after Blackberry’s success. It’s a swan song as much as it is a victory lap, and the duo makes the most of their 100-minute runtime. It’s sweeter than it is bitter, but it’s also the end of an era for two of Toronto’s finest.

With the Nirvanna chapter behind Johnson and McCarrol, it’s only up from here for both of their respective careers. BlackBerry swept the Canadian Screen Awards with fourteen wins out of seventeen nominations, with Johnson winning Best Director and McCarroll winning for Best Original Score. As of now, Johnson is in the process of filming Tony, an Anthony Bourdain biopic starring Dominic Sessa and distributed by A24, in which McCarrol will most likely return as composer. Rumor has it that Johnson is being eyed for a “Magic: The Gathering” film, which would certainly get Johnson enough money to do another blank-check vanity project like Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie. Whatever these two do next, they might just be the definitive duo in Canadian cinema right now.

Between the Tim Robinson-led Friendship and the recent Naked Gun reboot, it’s been a great year for theatrically-released comedies, and I’m glad that Neon is pulling their weight by not only distributing this but also the riotous Cannes comedy Splitsville. It’s a gamble for an American distributor to pick up a movie for theatrical release that otherwise would’ve only screened on Canadian TV channels, but it makes me all the more optimistic about the studio comedy post-pandemic. After a glowing reception at this year’s SXSW, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is set to screen at this year’s inaugural TIFF Midnight Madness, where it will most certainly blow the roof off the theater. I can’t gauge if Nirvanna will break into the mainstream anytime soon, but audiences are sure to have a good time with this one.

TIFF 2025 | Movie Review: A Hilarious and Heartfelt Comeback for Nirvanna In "Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie"