Imagine Flight of the Conchords if they didn’t have a music career. Or how good it feels to just have fun with your best friend, doing whatever it is that you love. It’s that kind of offbeat, inoffensive humor that drives Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.

Nirvanna began first as a web series, then a sitcom on the now-defunct Viceland channel, and is now gaining a new life as a film picked up for distribution by Neon. In it, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol play “Matt” and “Jay,” self-parodied versions of themselves made to fit within these less-successful lives.

Johnson’s version of himself is that of an immature man more obsessed with creating grand schemes to get the band noticed than he is actually doing anything like contacting a venue or getting a manager. Conversely, McCarrol’s his long-suffering best friend who is always forced to go along with Matt’s schemes. Unfortunately, however, in the film his patience is beginning to wear thin, and we can see that their friendship is on a precarious ledge.

For real: How did they do this?

The film opens with Matt’s incredibly outlandish Big Idea: Parachuting off of the CN Tower and onto the field at a Toronto Blue Jays game to announce a show they have not yet booked at the Rivoli. A Toronto club with a capacity of 230 people, as well as a history within the Canadian alt-comedy scene, the Rivoli is like their Holy Grail of sorts. The scheme to play there has been going on for nearly two decades, from the web series to the new film itself.

How they pulled off this stunt is still shrouded in a bit of mystery. Filmed hidden-camera style, we can only see bits and pieces of their journey up into the tower. But when Matt’s grand plan doesn’t work, the rift between the friends grows further. It is clear that, as much as Jay cares about Matt, he has to also care about himself and his own future.

And speaking of future: Somehow, Matt actually manages to go back in time, to 2008. Him and Jay were young and optimistic then, and as they walk the streets of Toronto seventeen years ago, they see what they had taken for granted back then. That includes their friendship, and how they need to navigate that in the final act of the film that sees Jay trying to run from the threat of prison.

Oh, to go back and experience The Hangover for the first time again

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a nostalgia machine. Not just in the time-travel sense, either. Putting yourselves into the shoes of these two friends, you have to wonder what your life would be like if you could go back in time. It reminds us of our mortality, and the ephemeralness of life itself. It also reminds us that life is too short to not have fun and hang out with your friends.

Featuring copious Back to the Future references and Orbitz placements (really, I had no idea that was an actual drink), Nirvanna wraps you up in its millennial humor. For us, 2008 was a formative time, and many of us look back on it with a bittersweet fondness.

There was an incredibly easy chance this film could have been cringeworthy. After all, we have all grown up with media like this, and most of the time it does not age well. However, Johnson and McCarrol are just so charming and good-natured that you have to love it. Never once do they punch down. The characters of Matt and Jay aren’t truly themselves, but you can still see them in there. And they are an absolute joy to watch.

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