If you’ve never heard of Nirvanna The Band The Show, don’t fret, you’re not living under a rock. The cult web series turned television show, now turned feature film, is neither about the grunge-rock group fronted by Kurt Cobain, nor is it really about a band or show—in any traditional sense, at least.
Debuting in 2007 as an independent web series, the show is a mockumentary-style comedy starring co-creators Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll. The pair play (semi-)fictionalized versions of themselves: Two ‘man-children’ best-friends and roommates stuck in their 90s Canadian childhood. Members of the eponymous ‘Nirvanna the Band,’ Matt and Jay dream of playing a show at The Rivoli—a small Toronto music venue, restaurant, and bar. The only problem? Neither of the pair knows how to book it. Instead, the two craft a seemingly never-ending series of schemes, each more absurd and intricate than the last, to hopefully earn them their deserved spot on stage at the Queen Street music club.
Nirvanna The Band inverts, then breaks, then upends all of the traditional rules of storytelling in the visual medium. Reminiscent of comedies like Just for Laughs Gags and Borat, the only two actors in a given scene are often Johnson and McCarroll themselves. Nearly everyone else, from extras to people who play pivotal roles in the plot, are real people, unaware that the duo’s preposterous actions are in service of an even more ludicrous story. Yet such conventions are still never scripture for Johnson and McCarroll. Sometimes, side characters that the audience once thought to be ordinary Torontonians return, ready to up the ante. From arson to robbery to general public nuisances, Nirvanna The Band keeps the audience in both shock and awe, wondering exactly what’s real, what’s scripted, and what’s somewhere in between.
The latest installation amplifies these themes up to 11. It would be inadequate to say that it simply breaks the fourth wall. Rather, Johnson and McCarroll completely shatter it, forcing the audience to question whether it ever existed at all. As a paragon of metafictional filmmaking, the pair repeatedly acknowledge that they’re in a movie, often talking to the camera operators themselves and showing them on camera. Carrying on the long tradition of intertextual storytelling, the film abounds with references to icons of 90s culture and Canadian nostalgia, often incorporating and interpolating pieces of those beloved and heavily copyrighted materials themselves. In fact, the central plot device of the story is one big reference to, or parody of, Back to the Future. At one point, Johnson speaks directly to the camera, acknowledging just what a copyright nightmare the film will be for distribution.
Nevertheless, Neon picked up the film in March 2025 after it debuted earlier that month at South by Southwest, where it won a coveted Audience Award. This is hardly Johnson’s first directing success, following his previous critically acclaimed film, BlackBerry, starring Glenn Howerton of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Canadian comedy mainstay Jay Baruchel. McCarroll composed the film’s score. Up next on Johnson’s directorial plate is a reported Anthony Bourdain biopic starring Dominic Sessa of The Holdovers. Although Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is not yet in wide release, Johnson and McCarroll hosted an advanced screening at Montreal’s Cinema du Musée in October as part of a promotional tour for the film.
Though Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie ups the stakes like never before, it never jumps the proverbial shark. The stunts are crazier, the antics more inane, and the legal trouble the two must surely be in, brazen. But it never forgets its roots. The Rivoli is still the unattainable MacGuffin driving the plot, and the two best friends are still the wacky, goofy, mischief-makers fans fell in love with in 2007.
Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is set for theatrical release in February 2026.
