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WWith its silliness, and unexpected visuals, this hellzapoppin’ thriller from Canada and director Matt Johnson succeeds. But if, like me, you’re coming at this from outside the existing fanbase website and the TV drama Nirvanna the Band the Showyou’ll need time to catch on, and get used to the gags and the lo-fi klutz aesthetic. (Though, as I say, the indie look is cleverly co-existed with digital trickery.)
Johnson was Success happened in 2023 with BlackBerryalmost a mobile device that was once so important and sadly underutilized. Now he and his writing-acting partner Jay McCarrol give us an absurd time-travel comedy, inspired by Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future. But this comic has no interest in BTTF’s Freudian view of gender relations. In fact, women play zero on this. It’s more in the boyish spirit of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in Wayne’s World, or Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Matt and Jay are two under forty Toronto who, apparently without needing to earn money from any kind of day job, devote themselves to their evil society called Nirvanna. (The two-n misspelling of the famous group is … on purpose? Accidental? Yet it’s part of their overall vibe of lost mistakes.) They always try and fail to get a reservation at the Rivoli, a hip Toronto venue. Matt then talks Jay into flying from the top of the city’s CN Tower as a familiar sight that ends in chaos. His next idea is even worse: install a fake machine in their RV and say it’s from the year 2008. Their accidental trip back to 2008 opens a terrible wound; Jay plans to leave Matt and resume his solo career.
Why 2008? Good times or bad? There is no clear logic. This was the beginning of the Obama administration and the time of the great crisis, in which, as it happens, Canada prided itself on doing better than other economies. But where another type of film would have looked at the meaning of civilization, the humor here would come across as cynical and insane. You have to relax and go with it. And the incredible passion that Johnson and McCarrol bring to their lofty ideas reminded me Primer, Shane Carruth’s cult horror film about time travel. If there is a main point in this film it is how quickly time passes when you are trying and failing to make a music business. But laughter is very important.
