Do you have the time to listen to me whine?
I love Green Day. They are one of the most interesting American rock bands, ever. They started as scrappy punks, evolved into shape-shifting garage rockers, matured into one of the key voices of Bush-era political resistance, and have used their adult years to tackle rock operas, a triple-album cycle, and more. Every step of the way, they’ve made hooky, singalong bangers. No one would accuse them of batting 1.000 from one track to the next, or even one album to the next, but they have gone so much further than a trio of snotty California punks whose breakout album was named after poop could ever have hoped.
Thus I am sad to report that Nimrods is pretty bad as a movie about Green Day. To be clear, it is not a Green Day biopic, and that’s fine by me; I wouldn’t want a cheap imitation Billie Joe, some teen heartthrob belting out knockoff versions of “Basket Case” and “Brain Stew.” A movie can pay tribute to a musician without literally telling their story. I really love, for example, Blinded by the Light as a tribute to my all-time fave, Bruce Springsteen. Bits of Nimrods’ story mirror Green Day’s early days, but only superficially, through a handful of biographical references. Ultimately, this is a standalone road trip movie with Green Day’s name stapled to it, and to my eyes, that name does it more harm than good.
I would be fine with this format if Nimrods did something meaningful with Green Day’s music, but it doesn’t. It drops some fine songs by the band into the soundtrack in the most obvious ways possible. (Would you believe the film closes on a montage set to “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”?) For anyone who appreciates this band on any level deeper than “icons of pop-punk,” it’s frankly kind of embarrassing. This is a movie about young people trying to figure out who they’re going to be tomorrow and the day after that, and it never thinks to connect that struggle to a band that has never known what it was going to be tomorrow or the day after that, either, and has been all the better for it.
Take Green Day out of the equation, though, and approach Nimrods as just another coming-of-age story, and you could do a heck of a lot worse. It’s disarming, sweet, and intermittently funny. It’s not a classic road trip movie (alas, Hollywood doesn’t seem to make those anymore), but it’s undeniably charming, and a strong showcase for its likable young cast.
The film follows the Analog Dogs, a Kansas City punk trio of high schoolers: Tommy (Mason Thames), a ringleader still reeling from his father’s death; wild-card Fred (Kylr Coffman); and goody two-shoes Chad (Ryan Foust), whose habitual punctuality, Tommy and Fred point out, disqualifies him as a proper punk. The band’s name keeps getting misread as “Anal Dogs.” (Dumb running gag. I laughed.) Duped into believing they’ve been booked to open for Green Day on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles, the boys head west, and just about everything that can go wrong does.
Nimrods premiered at TIFF last year under the title New Years Rev; the new name nods to Green Day’s excellent 1997 album Nimrod (and also doubles as a fair description of our heroes). Writer-director Lee Kirk, who developed the story with the band and previously directed Billie Joe Armstrong in 2016’s Ordinary World, clearly has affection for these dopes he’s written. His script never punches down at its clueless teens; it patiently lets them make mistakes and piss each other off. Somewhere along the highway, the movie becomes a friendship drama in road comedy get-up. Each boy grows in small, incremental ways, and their bond starts to matter as much as making it to the big concert.
Much of the film’s success rides on its leads. Thames continues his run as a pitch-perfect (if generic) teen leading man, and Foust makes a good third wheel as the resident dork, but Coffman is the real breakout: a fiery punk jester who’s a little more vulnerable than he initially lets on. Jenna Fischer, playing Tommy’s mom Jodie, is fine but underused. Fischer, Kirk’s wife, has never quite escaped the shadow of The Office, and this thin role won’t change that. Olivia (Mckenna Grace), a punk girl Tommy meets on the road, gets short shrift, too. Grace is lovely and has great chemistry with Thames, but she gets just a couple of scenes, and they feel completely disconnected from the rest of the story. The supporting cast has a few fun turns, but far and away the best small role belongs to Fred Armisen as a creepy motel owner. (I’m historically up-and-down on Armisen, but very much up here.)
Where Nimrods sputters is in the details. Pretty much all of them, actually. For one, it can’t seem to decide when it’s set, which maybe isn’t surprising for an ode to a band that’s been around for nearly four decades. Smart devices place several scenes in the present day; other moments have the scruff and analog touch of the ’90s, when Green Day got its start, all camcorders and four-track recorders. (On brand for the Analog Dogs, I suppose.) And the way everyone treats Green Day as world-class A-listers suggests the movie takes place somewhere between those two poles, likely during the American Idiot days of the mid-aughts. For a road trip movie, Nimrods also has shockingly little sense of place: the boys start in generic suburbia, make a pit stop in generic exurbia, and wind up in a bland Los Angeles cityscape. The rest of the production is just as generic, trading mostly in stock types and well-worn beats. It’s a movie that would benefit tremendously from some specificity.
Then, in the home stretch, the wheels completely come off. Just when we should finally get to see the payoff of all that slow-building growth, the climax short-circuits it, sliding into a half-baked Green Day concert movie and dropping the character threads the film worked so hard to build. Nimrods ditches its plot to a frightening degree, truly boiling down to: Everyone made it to the concert. It was good. The End. A few little bows get tied, the nicest of which is a resolution between Tommy and his older brother, Wayne (Keen Ruffalo).
So… what to do with Nimrods? I genuinely like it for what it actually is: a low-key coming-of-age road trip movie. And yet I wanted to love Nimrods the way I love Green Day. I wanted a moment that soars with personally felt rebellion like “Jesus of Suburbia” or confronts the passing of childhood like “X-Kid.” I wanted a moment that takes the piss out of respectable society like “Minority” or reflects on lost love like “Whatsername.” I’m not surprised Nimrods never reaches the power of any of that music, but I’m still disappointed. Green Day deserves a great movie that honors and understands the spirit of the band. Had this been a road trip to see some fictional band, I’d probably be giving Nimrods a gentle recommendation, like I do the similar Driver’s Ed or fellow Thames vehicle Incoming. But instead, like track 17 of the Nimrod album, I must reluctantly say “good riddance.”
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.