Time Out of Mind

 

NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE (A-minus) - Matt Johnson has a genius' knack for making smart, fun films. He has the look of a sloppy vaudevillian, the mind of Groucho Marx, and the director's eye of Hal Ashby.

 

I don't know much about Nirvanna the band, or Nirvanna the show, but this has been a long-running project between Johnson (above left) and collaborator Jay McCarrol who spent 2007 to 2009 creating a web series that chronicled fictional versions of themselves striving to play the Rivoli theater in Toronto. They incorporate footage from the original series (which they brought to television in 2017 and 2018) to create this clever slapstick time-travel romp that spans the past 18 years. 

The hook here is that the pair -- who remain down on their luck in the present day and still undiscovered -- develop a scheme to pose as time travelers from 2008 by rigging an RV to mimic the car from "Back to the Future" (whose footage is borrowed here in the name of satire). When the time-travel machine actually works (thanks to a plot device involving spilled Orbitz, a passing-fad drink from the 1990s), it is an opportunity, if all goes according to plan, to rewrite history and book that gig at the Rivoli in 2008 -- and ensure fame. Of course, all does not go according to plan. While in 2008, an unexpected rift between the two present-day pals (tiptoeing around their 2008 selves) triggers a butterfly-effect glitch in time/space, leading to an altered present day in which Jay went on to become famous and Matt hangs with a bunch of nerds in a Jay McCarrol tribute band.

The film starts with an elaborate stunt in which the pair plan to visit the deck of the CN Tower and parachute into Toronto's Sky Dome baseball stadium. It's not clear how much of this is staged, how much is real, or if doubles were used -- but the mockumentary effect is brilliant. The tower will play into a grand finale involving a crazed scheme to use a lightning strike to fuel the time machine. It's all quite complicated but enormously delightful. It all pretty much makes sense in its own controlled universe.

Like in Johnson's debut film "The Dirties," there is an "Office"-like meta touch of an unseen crew filming all of the antics, both in the present day and back in 2008. Johnson still gets a lot of mileage out of subtle glances at the camera, often trying to mask a deep-seated panic that he is determined to overcome. And like "The Dirties," this is a heartfelt buddy movie, a touching paean to enduring friendship. (The germ of an idea for the original web series started when the pair were high school besties.)

Matt is clearly the instigator of most of the mayhem. At times, Matt and Jay's interactions on the streets and in the businesses of Toronto seem like actual footage, with real people and folded into the narrative. Their TV show was known to break the fourth wall, and this melange of factual, fiction and metafictional somehow gels as a cohesive movie that absolutely nails the ending.

None of this happens without Johnson and his ability to synthesize disparate elements into a movie that somehow comes off as lame-brained and brilliant at the same time. (See also his retro take on a government film crew making a film that fabricates the 1969 moon landing, "Operation Avalanche.") Most recently, Johnson went back in time to score with "BlackBerry," which fictionalized the creation of the original PDA and precursor to Apple's iPhone.

So far, as a writer, director and performer, he can do no wrong. His joy of filmmaking pours off the screen, and this DIY inside joke is as entertaining as 100 minutes can get.