Based on a web series, and a subsequent TV series, Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie should appeal to fans of those involved. I would say, however, that I ended up liking it a lot, despite my ignorance of the property. And hearing about how the show used to play out, I might not have wanted to give this my time if I thought it might end up feeling too focused on various improvised encounters with members of the public (as was common in the show).
The plot starts off simply enough. Musicians Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol (played by . . . Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol) are trying in vain to get their band booked into a venue named the Rivoli. They just want one chance, but it hasn't happened in the many years that they've been trying. No worries. The answer is clearly time travel. What starts as an unlikely joke soon turns into something quite serious when Matt spills juice over his own home-made flux capacitor, which makes it work just as it does in Back To The Future. Things can now be changed for the better, but only if our two leads can stay friends and stay focused. Which seems unlikely.
With Johnson also directing, and both he and McCarrol crafting a screenplay featuring input from pretty much everyone in their core creative group, this is very much a small-scale indie flick in all but the actual budget (which seems to have been about $2M). For better or worse, and despite the very obvious shadow cast over it by BTTF, it's quite unlike anything else I've seen in recent years, and it's all the better for being so unique.
While there is a lot of improv on display here, kudos to the film-makers for making use of most of it in a way that works in service of a surprisingly complex main narrative strand. It's one thing to go out and about, filming hours and hours of footage to get the snippets of actual material required, but it's another thing entirely to assemble everything into a feature that feels both anarchic and finely-tuned.
Johnson and McCarrol also do very well in their main roles. They may not be the best actors, but their special skillset lies in working in a way that allows them to keep many options available to them as they dance and whirl around a variety of key sequences. Nobody else onscreen may have as much work to do, but they're all very good, whether getting directly involved in the action or simply showing how they have to hang back and blend in with the surroundings.
I don't think I'll rush to watch this again, and I'm certainly not won over to the idea of checking out episodes of the show, but this was a fun time while it was on, and there were a couple of moments that felt genuinely impressive (the main one being a wild set-piece within the first 10-20 minutes). I laughed enough, I appreciated the sweetness that became more apparent as things started to move to the inevitable conclusion, and I actually started to hope that maybe one day, just maybe, these guys would get to play their dream gig at the Rivoli.
7/10
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