It’s currently November 13, 2025, and I’m writing this review the day after having seen Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. However, since the movie won’t be coming to theaters until 2026, it makes sense to write a review and hold it for a few months, as it serves as a form of time travel. With most movies, I wouldn’t make it a point to give you a peek behind the curtain, but given the importance of time travel to Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, I figured it was worth mentioning. While the movie is a hilarious, absurd, inventive buddy comedy, it’s also an experience about what you’d do if given the chance to change your life and the importance of friendship.

For those unfamiliar, Nirvana the Band was a web series starring and created by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol as fictionalized versions of themselves getting into wacky antics. The pair adapted the series into a TV show, Nirvanna the Band the Show, which has earned two seasons up to now, and Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie takes place between Seasons 2 and 3 of that TV show. And in case you’re wondering, no, you absolutely do not have to know a single thing about any of this before you watch the movie.

The Movie continues Matt and Jay’s plans to play the local Toronto venue, the Rivoli, despite not having much of a show to perform. Their antics inadvertently send them back to 2008, back when they were making their web series, and offer them the chance to make key changes to their lives so they each get what they want. As with all time travel movies, these changes come with unexpected consequences.

While The Movie‘s humor is absolutely on my wavelength, the entire thrill of the movie hinges on whether or not you actually think these two are funny. Despite coming across as any number of loosey-goosey dorks who made a web series that you might have seen back in the College Humor days, Johnson and McCarrol bring a certain wholesomeness to the experience, due largely to their Canadian upbringing. With Johnson also serving as director, having previously directed movies like The Dirties and BlackBerry, he’s more than proven he’s not just a dummy who thinks pointing a camera at something funny is enough to warrant a movie.

Even though this is, you know, a movie, the entire vibe honors the spirit of the lo-fi web series and TV show, with the pair clearly just running through Toronto to steal whatever footage of themselves they can, and sometimes even having interactions with strangers on the street. Some exchanges are so absurd that they feel akin to something you’d see in a Jackass movie. What makes the filmmaking feel much more impressive, though, is the fact that these dorks have been filming themselves incessantly for decades, so thanks to some very clever editing, the filmmakers were able to re-purpose random footage of themselves from 20 years ago to make it look like they’re interacting with younger versions of themselves to propel the narrative forward. Some might think the pair had this long-term plan, based on how seamlessly the younger scenes fit into the narrative, but rather, it showcases just how inventive and improvisational of storytellers they are, that they could somewhat reverse engineer a feature film based on random scenes they already shot of themselves. Further confirming their improvisational filmmaking skills, the duo hosted a Q&A at my screening where they revealed that, during one key scene, they intentionally acted so strangely, they hoped to be confronted by authorities, yet because they received the exact opposite reaction, they had to film an entirely different sequence that contradicted footage they already captured to account for an entirely different outcome.

Early on in the film, Johnson references Back to the Future and embraces the themes of that film into his hair-brained scheme. With that movie being a seminal example of a time-travel comedy, The Movie leans heavily on concepts of running into your former self, making small changes to impact your future, and adapting to the challenges of potentially not getting back to your “home” timeline. In that sense, it almost serves as a Back to the Future parody as much as it feels like its own experience. This will excite some audiences but potentially deter others, depending on how much you enjoy the source material and tributes to it.

The only thing that really holds back The Movie is its run time. Even though it only comes in at 100 minutes, the narrative momentum and the ways it sometimes feels like multiple 20-minute episodes of their TV show compiled together mean that, by the time we get to the final act, it can feel a bit exhausting and the guerrilla filmmaking slows down those final sequences. It’s not even that those sequences are bad or ineffective, it just doesn’t come to as efficient of a crescendo as you would hope for after the chaotic energy of everything that came before it.

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is one of the most delightfully deranged time-travel comedies not only of this year, but arguably of all time. Sure, it’s light on the science and the actual otherworldly elements of time travel that could make it fall more in line with something like It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol, or it could be a stretch to call this a “time travel” movie, given the inherent absurdity and silliness of the affair, but those timeline-hopping elements are key components of the entire experience. Whether you’re a devout Nirvana the Band fan or a complete novice, The Movie should not be missed, otherwise, you’ll wish you could get into a time machine and correct the error of your ways.

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