As someone unfamiliar with Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s cult Canadian mockumentary web and television series Nirvanna the Band the Show, I was pleasantly surprised and delighted by their funny, inventive feature-length film, which wholly stands on its own. (When I first glanced at its title, I assumed it might be a serious documentary about the band Nirvana.)

Set in Toronto, it stars Johnson and McCarrol as fictionalized versions of themselves—schlubby losers in a two-man band called Nirvanna the Band, despite never having composed any songs together. Still, they have lofty ambitions of making a splash by performing at the noted music venue the Rivoli. Matt is the louder, mouthier one of the pair, while Jay is the quieter and more musically talented one who seems, for some reason, to go along with Matt’s inane ideas. (The dithering McCarrol does on the piano is pretty good; he also wrote the film’s lively, expansive score.)

Matt’s initial big scheme is to parachute with Jay off the top of the CN Tower and land in the Rogers Centre during a baseball game. How could anyone not know their band if they were to pull that off? The plan is a woozy sequence of guerrilla filmmaking, especially nausea-inducing for the acrophobic. They interact with non-actors in the lead-up and throughout, though they are never cruel to anyone; it feels as if everything is in the good-natured spirit of fun and love for Toronto.

When their plan goes awry, Matt concocts a scheme to use the now-defunct Canadian-based Orbitz drink as fuel and a giant camper van to create a Back to the Future–inspired time machine to travel back to 2008 and reset the trajectory of their musical career. (You won’t find much logic in any of these absurd ideas.) Further hijinks ensue when Jay has other plans to separate himself from his overbearing friend and go solo in another timeline.

Johnson’s last film, 2023’s BlackBerry, hit a pang of nostalgia for and reflection upon the seemingly simpler mid-to-late aughts, that era before smartphones really took off and changed the world. This happens here too when they land in 2008 amidst an array of amusing jokes: Their clue that they’ve arrived in that year isn’t something historically significant, like Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, but the fact that Bill Cosby is still performing stand-up. Remarkably edited by Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch, the film literally goes back in time, utilizing footage of Matt and Jay’s younger selves from their web series. They end up interacting with one another in ways that are both unpredictable and faintly melancholic.

The film, while going slightly slack in the middle, is still quickly paced and quick-witted overall. It’s a knowing bro comedy in the tradition of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure mixed with internet filmmaking and littered with pop culture references—from Robert Zemeckis’s time-travel cinematic template to various VHS tapes and movie posters strewn about Matt and Jay’s disheveled row house (where they are also living in 2008). It’s always exciting when this type of comedy lands well, given it’s a tricky genre to get right. It somehow never feels too endlessly moronic, nor does it outwear its welcome. Composer Alan Silvestri’s Back to the Future motif is featured, as is similar-sounding music in McCarrol’s score—a nice contrast between the smooth Hollywood feel of that music and the grainy, shaky, handheld, low-budget shenanigans of the duo’s filmmaking. Their affection for movies and moviemaking is palpable, and their spirited, rollicking adventures are consistently entertaining.