There’s a moment about halfway through Alex Ross Perry’s new Pavement movie Pavements where Joe Keery realizes he may have made a career-hindering mistake: He can’t stop talking like Stephen Malkmus. Poor Keery, a 33-year-old onetime Netflix darling from Massachusetts, can’t help but blur his syllables together in an aloof California drawl, a heavy vocal fry emanating through static lips. “I don’t really think I want to be Stephen anymore,” he suddenly tells his dialect coach, who’s still befuddled by the photo of Malkmus’ tongue that Keery presented to her. For research purposes.

The actual Stephen Malkmus was also 33 years old when he publicly declared that he didn’t really want to be Stephen Malkmus anymore, either. On November 20, 1999, during a Pavement show in London, the frontman attached a pair of handcuffs to his microphone stand to symbolize his exhaustion from being in the band. That was pretty much enough confirmation that Pavement — then still fresh off the release of their final studio album Terror Twilight — had disbanded. But as Pavements tells it, that initial breakup was “not a big deal” to the general public. When they would reunite in 2022, however, it was “a huge deal” — so much so that Perry wrote and directed the jukebox musical Slanted! Enchanted! starring longtime Pavement fan Zoe Lister-Jones, which ran for two nights only that same year.

Pavements is not just a straightforward documentary for the uninitiated to learn everything important there is to know about Pavement, the band of post-punk-loving outliers whose 1994 single “Cut Your Hair” gave them a brush with mainstream rock stardom. Pavements is also not just dramatized feel-good, loser-to-legend Oscar bait, because despite frequently earning labels as one of the best bands of the ’90s, Pavement always preferred to keep their fame simmering at a cult status level.

Instead, it’s an unusual hybrid: a mockumentary with plenty of real archival footage, an exploration of a pseudo-biopic called Range Life that’s too ridiculous to actually exist, and a behind-the-scenes look at Slanted! Enchanted!, which is ridiculous but actually exists anyway. If you’re already lost, that’s probably part of Perry’s intention. But even as the boundaries between fact and fiction feel undetectable — and in Pavements, they often do — the film argues that Pavement have always deserved the level of notoriety granted by their 2022 comeback, even when the rest of the world didn’t treat them as such. As Malkmus recalls in a voiceover early on in the film: “I always was hoping that it was music for the future, you know? I mean, I think everyone who’s not that successful in their time tries to think that.” Pavements aims to chronicle the odd trajectory of their influence in a fashion that feels true to its even odder subjects.

Although its ambiguous, nonlinear, overlapped format can get distracting at times, Pavements expertly dodges the fate of oft-mocked musical biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis — talk about getting stuck in an accent! — by remembering that Malkmus, Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, Bob Nastanovich, Mark Ibold, and Steve West were never ones to embrace traditional approaches. It’s full of self-deprecating, self-aware satire and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments of sharp wit: “I know that you want to give 100 percent of that 50 percent you think that you might be able to give,” Matador boss Chris Lombardi, played by Jason Schwartzman, tells the band in one scene. It’s a dramatized re-enactment of the infamous mud throwing incident at the West Virginia stop of the Lollapalooza tour in 1995. The faux band members bicker and hang their heads low, though the screen splits to show viewers what actually happened after Pavement were pelted with chunks of dirt: Kannberg (whose younger self is played by Nat Wolff) mooned the crowd, then went back to the green room to continue goofing around with his bandmates.

Pavements succeeds in spotlighting those endearing moments of sincerity among the nonsense. As Perry and Slanted! Enchanted! choreographer Angela Trimbur vet potential cast members for the musical, each one offering their own theater-kid interpretation of “Gold Soundz,” I’m reminded of my own introduction to Pavement. I was a freshman in high school and I downloaded a ZIP file of curated indie hits from Urban Outfitters’ blog, which, at the time, still felt like a viable introduction to counterculture. “Gold Soundz” was on there. I was immediately enamored, and it sounded so fresh and exciting to me that I assumed it was contemporary, just like the Neon Indian and Grizzly Bear tracks I’d discovered from the same source. I was stricken with both amazement and grief when I realized that not only was this song a year older than me, but that I would presumably never get the chance to hear it live in my lifetime. (Pavement’s somewhat brief 2010 reunion tour, which didn’t stop anywhere near my hometown, doesn’t take much presence in the film.)

Even now, after getting the chance to see Pavement live and attending the Tribeca pop-up museum in their honor, Pavements is the closest I’ve felt to the magic of their initial run. It’s a film for Pavement fans who are quick to make fun of their own Pavement fanship, who fawned when Malkmus got a subtle mention in Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster Barbie, who felt some type of way about a TikTok-beloved Gen Z pop singer declaring she wanted to be Malkmus, who scratched their heads when Pavement became TikTok-beloved themselves. The stories you hear, you know they never add up; Pavements finds joy in the unlikely outcomes.

Pavements premieres in theaters nationwide 6/6. It’s screening now in limited engagements.