"Nirvanna The Band The Song The Movie" Review

 I am totally unfamiliar with the Canuckian web series Nirvanna the Band the Show which ran from 2007-2009 and only got hipped to Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie because a couple of YouTubers I follow reviewed it and it involved a pair of musicians trying to get a gig at Toronto's Rivoli nightclub.

I am very familiar with this club because for almost 20 years the missus and I would attend the North by Northeast (NXNE) music festival and the Rivoli was on a strip on Queen St. along with The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, The 360 Club, The Black Bull, and Cameron House which allowed for us to park once and then hit multiple clubs per cycle, walking in, seeing if we dig what's on stage, then hitting the next one if it didn't grab us. In 2016, organizers completely scrapped the format and we haven't been back since 2015. It appears they're going back to the old tons of bands in lots of clubs format, but Canuckia is a totalitarian hellscape how under occupation. C'est la vie.

Anyhoo, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol co-wrote and star as fictionalized versions of themselves who, 17 years after forming Nirvanna with hopes of playing the Rivoli, still haven't scored a gig there. Matt apparently is big on making elaborate plans and decides that they should do a publicity stunt where they parachute off the CN Tower into the adjacent SkyDome during a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game to promote the gig at the Rivoli they don't actually have.

They get on top of the CN Tower by buying tickets to the EdgeWalk, an actual experience where for $199 you get to walk outside 1,168 feet up attached to a harness. They cut themselves free of the safety line and jump, but due to an incoming lightning storm the SkyDome's roof was being closed and they don't make it inside.

Since this plan failed, Matt decides they should modify their RV to look like the DeLorean from Back to the Future and attempt to convince the Rivoli that they're time travelers so how about a gig. Fed up, Jay secretly calls a club in Ottawa to book a slot for an open mic night tomorrow. (The joke being it's 280 miles and a 4-1/2 hour drive between these cities and there surely have to be other open mics available in a city with a 3.3M population.)

The next morning, Jay hits the road unaware that Matt is sleeping in the back of the RV. When Matt wakes up, they argue while Jay drives and when the RV hits 88 kmh (heh) it suddenly travels back in time to 2008, though they don't immediately register what happened. (The way Matt discovers they're in the past by how a movie audience laughs at a now-forbidden word - no, it's not Blazing Saddles, but you're close - is clever.) Once they realize their predicament, they attempt to return to 2025, but Matt realizes that the time machine only worked because he spilled Orbitz - a novelty beverage that ceased production in 1999 - on the electronics. With the remaining contents lost when the bottle was broken, the only sure source would be their old apartment where they'll need to sneak in without encountering their younger selves.

Needless to say something goes wrong and when they return to the present the world has changed and Jay is now a major rock star and Matt is the drummer in a Jay McCarrol tribute band. Matt attempts to get to Jay to set things right, but Jay dismisses him until he finds himself wanted by the police and teams up with Matt to get the time machine working to undo the damage. With no Orbitz available, they copy the method used in Back to the Future in an absolutely impossible scheme to restore the timeline.

While time travel movies are generally logically suspect, they really play fast and loose with what happens and don't really try to make it make sense. Apparently the Jay we start with steps into the life of the alternative timeline Jay, but how does he know the Rock Star Jay's material without raising suspicions and what happens to that Jay when the fit hits the shan? Don't know.

The way Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie tells its story is via a pseudo-documentary shooting style where they filmed guerilla style on the streets of Toronto, interacting with people and even cops (who are doing a very bad job of protecting places), like Borat did, but referencing the guys running the cameras occasionally. They use old footage from their web series to create the interactions with their younger selves - no de-aging or old age makeup here, just a bunch of invisible VFX work all over the place elsewhere - and the way they stage things involving the CN Tower is pretty wild. (The way they utilized a  real-life shooting at Drake's mansion to film scenes is another great behind-the-scenes detail.)

Because of my familiarity with Toronto's music clubs, the funniest detail is this obsession with the Rivoli when there are other far more famous venues like the El Mocambo, where Stevie Ray Vaughn and Elvis Costello cut live albums, or Lee's Palace, a setting for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World's bass battle between Michael Cera and Brandon Routh. Sneaky Dee's, The Silver Dollar, Bovine Sex Club, and the Horseshoe Tavern are all more prominent clubs, not that Rivoli is bad - it's just a smallish back room behind a restaurant and bar front - but unless you're from Toronto or a visitor or, I presume, a viewer of the web series, how would you appreciate this?

This isn't to say you might not find more laughs in this low key shaggy time travel pastiche. I was somewhat surprised how flat it left me; the missus liked it a lot FWIW. But I do credit it for being something different than the usual formula even though it plays a bit like Temu Lonely Island.

Score: 5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

"This Is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues" Review

"Hello, Cleveland!" "[Boston] isn't a big college town." "Dubly." "It was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf." "What's wrong with being sexy? Sex-IST." "None more black." And of course, "These go to 11." If you recognize those quotes, then you're obviously clued into - even if you haven't actually seen - the legendary 1984 mockumentary (mock documentary) This Is Spinal Tap. While not the first mockumentary, TIST blew the format wide open paving the way for co-star/co-writer Christopher Guest's mocks like A Mighty Wind, Best In Show, and Waiting For Guffman and even TV series like The Office and Parks & Recreation. The sorely overlooked rap mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat (due to hang-ups in distribution leading to Chris Rock's merely OK CB4 to beat it to theaters and mindshare) rivals TIST for sheer faux verisimilitude.

Co-written and directed by Rob Reiner making his directorial debut, Guest along with co-stars and co-writers Harry Shearer and Michael McKean told the story of faltering rock band Spinal Tap as they attempted to promote their latest album, Smell the Glove. As tensions between guitarists and boyhood friends Nigel Tufnel (Guest in a Jeff Beck shag haircut) and David St. Hubbins (McKean) grow, shows get canceled and venue sizes shrink - or as the band's manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra) puts it, "Their appeal is becoming more selective." - the band teeters on implosion before pulling it together at the end.

While Spinal Tap in real life put out two subsequent albums in 1992 and 2009 and made occasional festival and charity concert appearances, what fans really wanted was a sequel. Finally, a whopping 41 years later we got Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues and while it's not a bad movie, it's a perfectly adequate and unnecessary stroll through the nostalgia bogs where the Member Berries are grown.

The hook for ST2 is that Ian Faith has died and his daughter, Hope (Kerry Godliman), has inherited his effects including dad's contract with Tap where she discovers the band was obligated to perform one more show. Unfortunately, the band had broken up 15 years previously due to some unknown beef between Nigel and David and the members had gone on to other pursuits. Nigel and his girlfriend are running a cheese and guitar shop; David is doing scores for true crime podcasts and hold music, and bassist Derek Smalls (Shearer) has opened a glue museum.

Reluctantly they reconvene in New Orleans to rehearse for the gig with their keyboardist, Caucasian Jeff (C. J. Vanston, who is the band's real life producer and keyboardist since 1989), while trying to find a drummer who can play and isn't afraid of the band's poor luck with keeping them alive, finally ending up with Didi Crockett (actually pro drummer Valerie Franco).

From there we're treated to an amiable sequence of scenes and schticks plus cameos from real life musicians including Paul McCartney, Questlove, Elton John and a pair of drummers who I shant spoil who turn down the gig while pushing the other with the clear implication that they expect the drummer curse to get the other. Overhanging everything is whatever drove David and Nigel apart and frankly when that thread is paid off, it's not that great or funny a reason.

The actors are now in their late-70s, early-80s and while I've recently seen several concerts with septuagenarian performers like Devo, B-52's, Lene Lovich, Alice Cooper and Rob Halford from Judas Priest who absolutely rocked it, the Tapsters are distractingly aged and the overall energy is on the mild side.

All the callbacks to the first movie and it's soundtrack (with a couple of brief references to songs from their Break Like The Wind album) weigh things down because it's all Member Berries ("You 'member? I 'member.") That McCartney's scene where he points out a weak part of a new song David is working up being followed by David complaining where does SIR PAUL McCARTNEY get off dissing his song and being "toxic" is predictable even when it's mildly amusing. The cameos from Paul Schafer and Fran Drescher (as label reps Artie Fufkin and Bobbie Flekman, respectively) are perfunctory.

The utter ruination of the music business by file sharing then rapacious streaming services like Spotify isn't mentioned nor the rise of K-Pop, artists being signed off Tik Tok, and many other modern issues afflicting those seeking careers in music aren't mined for humor belying the Boomer-centric viewpoints of the creators. Their idea of biting satire is a somewhat toothless addition of Simon Howler (Chris Addison) - a cross between Pop Idol and American Idol creator Simon Fuller and the latter's snarky t-shirt model judge Simon Cowell - as a concert promoter incapable of processing music whose bright idea is for at least one of the band members to die during the show. Har-har, music biz suits are dumb.

I chalk up the general flatness of Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues to age and entitlement. When they made the first one, there were no expectations because the makers were basically nobodies. Reiner was Meathead from All in the Family; Guest was connected to various National Lampoon stage and recording projects; McKean was Lenny on Laverne & Shirley; and Shearer was a featured player on Saturday Night Live. 

Post-TIST everyone's career took off with Reiner posting a phenomenal run of all-time classics including Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and Misery before imploding with North, a movie so bad that when i came home from the dollar show and woke my mother up because I needed to talk to someone to process the horror I'd just survived. But that was 1992 and Reiner hasn't made a good movie since (reminds me of how Robert Zemekis was never good after winning Oscars for Forrest Gump) and while advancing to "OK" level is an improvement, it's also a bit of a grasp for past glories.

As for the rest, comfort breeds complacency and the hunger that fueled the original just isn't there. While it's not depressing and cringe seeing these geezers attempt to recapture that Spinal Tap spark, this is a movie fans of the OG will watch once then return to their new Criterion 4Ks of TIST. Half as good, Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues doesn't go to 11, it goes to...

Score: 5.5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.

And no, I didn't score it that way to make the joke. I just realized 5.5 was half of 11.

"Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" Review

The Lonely Island gang - most notorious for their fake rap SNL Digital Shorts - are back with their first feature film since Hot Rod, the music mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.

Andy Samberg starts as Connor4Real, a Justin Bieber-ish pop singer who started off as part of a rap group, The Style Boyz (played by fellow Islanders and directors Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer), before going solo and hitting big with his first album, Thriller, Also. Now on the verge of the release of his sophomore joint, Connquest, the documentary is meant to record his triumph, but of course it turns into a Spinal Tapesque debacle. Instead of collaborating with his DJ Owen (Taccone), he's written all the lyrics himself (bad call) and worked with a hundred different producers and the resulting album is both stupid and offensive (in a bad way) and critically savaged.

Popstar's targets - marginally talented pop idols surrounded by yes men, living in a bubble divorced from reality; tabloid journalism as embodied by a running TMZ spoof fronted by Will Arnett, etc. - are easy fish-in-a-barrel stuff, but they managed to hit most of the marks. The music spoofs aren't as good as their SNL-era material, but suffice.

Samberg is OK doing his thing, but the surprise MVP is SNL alum Tim Meadows as Connor's long-suffering manager. Meadows has never really had much of a movie career after SNL - The Ladies Man did about as well as It's Pat and Superstar (i.e. not good) - and he's quite good with the material he has here as a man who used to be part of New Jack Swing-era band Tony! Toni! Toné! as the forth Tony with a question mark: Tony! Toni! Toné! Tony? There is also a parade of real musicians playing along with the gag as well as surprise cameos I won't spoil here.


Sweetly raunchy - it is co-produced by Judd Apatow and if you liked the gratuitous penises in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story you'll be happy here, too - and innocuously amusing, Popstar never real pops hard, but it's worth watching for music spoof and Lonely Island fans.

Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable.