It's a matter of personal preference and taste whether Pavement, the lo-fi '90s indie rock icons, are "the world's most important and influential band."

But that's how they're introduced and that's how they're treated in "Pavements," which is just as much a celebration of the Stockton, California, scenesters as it is a send-up of modern music biopics and the way we commodify and canonize our cultural heroes. Through that lens, it embodies the spirit and sensibility of the band in a way that makes it an essential companion piece to its legacy.

Or maybe it means nothing, who cares. That's the ethos of Pavement and that's what writer-director Alex Ross Perry ("Her Smell") captures by playing with irony and sincerity in equal measure in his portrait of the revered band, who were big enough to be mentioned in "Barbie" but underground enough that the reference came as a shocker in the middle of a mainstream blockbuster comedy.

So wouldn't it be funny if there were a Pavement biopic starring a bunch of young, of-the-moment actors? Why, yes, so Perry creates one. And wouldn't it also be funny if there were a bleeding heart Broadway jukebox musical dedicated to the band's music? Why, yes, so Perry creates one of those, too.

And he folds them both, along with behind-the-scenes footage of the projects, into an actual documentary about Pavement, who never achieved measurable mainstream success but who remain near and dear to the hearts of Gen Xers and older millennials for staying true to their ideals, never selling out and always being their slacker brat selves.

Who gets to have a biopic? When and why do artists achieve biopic status? Is it 1 million album sales? Is it a Rolling Stone cover? Perry takes it upon himself to fake some of these achievements in the film, opening a Pavement pop-up museum in New York and filling it with both real and imagined artifacts from the band's history, including images from its Absolut Vodka campaign (which absolutely never happened) and the band's Slacker Generation '90s Icon Award from MTV (which is not a real thing). But what if it was? "Pavements" is a delightfully wry assessment of culture and what it means to "make it," and how subjective the concept of "making it" is.

A movie-within-the-movie, titled "Range Life," stars Joe Keery as Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus, and finds Keery playing with the process of finding Malkmus' character, learning his voice by going full Method, working with a dialect coach and studying pictures of the inside of Malkmus' mouth. (You could get lost counting the levels of meta self-awareness on display.) Meanwhile, musical theater actors — some of whom have a deep fondness for Pavement's catalog, others who have never heard of the band — throw their hearts into "Slanted! Enchanted!" a musical which plays like the "American Idiot" of the Pavement world.

It's a bit like a music doc by way of Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal." Perry handles everything with a wink and a smile, including the "a-ha!" biopic moment that leads to the writing of an important song, and Malkmus and crew get to celebrate their story alongside the various faux-tributes. "Pavements" follows the group as they mount a 2022 reunion tour and it recounts the band's history, never quite fitting into the larger 1990s alternative rock movement, and suffering through a thankless afternoon slot on the 1995 Lollapalooza outing. (Watch for glimpses of the tour's Pine Knob stop.)

"The stories you hear, you know they never add up." That's a quote from Pavement's "Frontwards," and it opens the film, and it frames Perry's affectionate story of success, legacy and having the good sense to laugh at it all. He finds the one way Pavement's story could be told and still feel true to the band's essence. He doesn't care, he cares, he really doesn't care. Did you see the drummer's hair?

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'PAVEMENTS'

Grade: B

No MPA rating (language)

Running time: 2:07

How to watch: Now in theaters

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