Review: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025)

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In between all the laughs, the guffahs, the wide-eyed disbelief at how absurd the actions on screen are, I kept asking myself, “How did they do that?” Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is many things: it’s a mockumentary; a time travel farce; an ode to friendship; a deep-dive into Toronto esoterica; a convoluted hangout flick made by two dudes who started making a webseries in the mid 2000s and who now are some of the best working filmmakers we’ve got in Toronto. But it’s also complex—almost stunningly so—in how it weaves together archival footage, audacious set-pieces, and unstaged mockumentary moments on the streets of Toronto.

Like its title, the plot of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a lot to break down, so I’m not going to go into detail. It would be a fool’s errand to describe much of the film in writing, especially to anyone who doesn’t live in Toronto or has no knowledge of the previous works following these two goofballs, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, playing fictional versions of themselves. Suffice to say that the Matt and Jay in the movie are two middle-aged dudes who have been trying to get a show at a Toronto venue called the Rivoli for almost 20 years. They have a band (sort of) called Nirvanna the Band, but most of what they do is create elaborate plans to score a show at the Rivoli—without actually being a good enough band to score a show at the Rivoli or contact management to book a gig.

The movie starts with their biggest plan yet: they are going to skydive off the CN Tower into the Skydome, where the Toronto Blue Jays play, interrupt the game, and announce to everyone in attendance that they will be playing the Rivoli that night. And then they do just that. Like Borat and other mockumentaries that have fictional characters interact with unaware people in unstaged scenarios, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie follows Matt and Jay to a Canadian Tire to buy gear, then into the CN Tower, where they smuggle their parachutes under their jackets, and eventually onto the edge of the tower during an EdgeWalk, where people are suspending from the top of the observation platform high above the city of Toronto (and the Skydome).

The whole sequence is filmed surreptitiously and without permits, as you’d expect from a mockumentary. The security guards are not aware they’re in a movie. The other people on the EdgeWalk might be aware, but they don’t act like it. There are even GoPro shots from the EdgeWalk instructor, who was unaware that his footage would end up being used in a feature film (how Johnson got access to that footage is a mystery). The whole sequence is daring, absurd, and riotously funny, as we watch Matt and Jay try to pull off this insane scheme—mostly for real. And the movie only gets more nuts from there.

Nothing later in the film matches the chutzpah of this CN Tower sequence, but the rest of the film does display the same sort of deceptive complexity of this early set piece. Soon enough, Matt and Jay end up back in 2008 thanks to some sci-fi absurdity, and are able to interact with their past selves, perhaps to set up a future where they’ve already scored a show at the Rivoli. Thematically, the film becomes about the tension that exists between the pursuit of an unattainable goal and the reality of achieving it. If you could rewrite history to get the acclaim you want, but it meant jettisoning the core relationship in your life to do so, would you do it? The film doesn’t spend much time reflecting on this central question, but it’s present throughout, offering a touching undercurrent to the absurdity, as the affection and on-screen chemistry between Matt and Jay (who are best friends in real life) is very real.

Directed by Johnson, who is best known for BlackBerry (2023) in addition to his mockumentaries such as Operation Avalanche (2016), the film looks extremely low-fi, with handheld cameras, direct-camera addresses, and street-level scenes on and around the Queen West neighbourhood of Toronto. But the low-fi approach hides the movie magic, which not only has the characters explore Toronto circa 2008, complete with old red streetcars and Jian Ghomeshi billboards, but also interact with their past selves and pull off daring stunts, not least of which is all the CN Tower related hooplah.

The movie constantly and explicitly references Back to the Future (1985), in the dialogue as well as other content and even in the film’s form. There’s a recurring joke about the potential copyright infringements of referencing the Back to the Future score and how you can avoid that by shifting the musical notes enough—which is exactly what McCarrol does with the film’s score, which he wrote. However, Johnson and McCarrol’s film is most like Back to the Future Part II (1989), where the plot is as much an excuse for formal inventiveness and cinematic play as it is a narrative.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie has the same playful inventiveness as Zemeckis’s sequel in how it plays with metafiction within an elaborately convoluted scenario in order to showcase the wonder of moviemaking and reflect on the value of a simple life. It remixes old webseries, reframes Toronto geography, and reimagines a slightly different history for these two goofballs in Canada’s largest city. I do wonder how the film will play for people without an understanding of Canadian mid-aughts pop culture or Toronto more generally, but for this critic who currently lives in Toronto, it’s hard to imagine there being a funnier or more absurdly inventive movie coming out in 2026.

8 out of 10

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025, Canada)

Directed by Matt Johnson; written by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol, based on Nirvana the Band the Show and Nirvanna the Band the Show; starring Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol.

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