Hitchin’ a Ride – Nimrods

In the interest of fairness and transparency, I feel I have to start this review of Nimrods, the new movie produced by punk rock band Green Day, by laying a TON of cards on the table. I am a huge, lifelong fan of Green Day. I know there are plenty of musical acts that objectively have had a bigger impact on the music industry and popular culture. I fully acknowledge that there are numerous bands and artists that have changed the way we look at the world and understand lyrical and instrumental composition in ways that are “better” than them. I know there are legitimate criticisms that can be lobbed at the group for things like taking too many cues from the likes of The Clash, recycling melodies across their catalog, “selling out” by bringing pop punk into the mainstream while “true” punk stayed underground, and so on.

I get ALL of that, but the fact remains that they are my all-time favorite band, and have been a crucial part of my existence for more than 30 years. It started when I was about 10 years old. My paternal grandmother (who I only ever met once but we maintained contact throughout my childhood) lived in San Diego for a good portion of her life, and one day she sent me a cassette tape of “some boys out of Oakland I think you might like.” That tape was of Kerplunk, the band’s second studio album, and their final one on the independent Lookout! Records before they signed with Reprise, released Dookie, and became superstars. The album was the first with Tré Cool as the drummer, and is most notable for including the original mix of “Welcome to Paradise,” which became a hit when it was re-recorded for Dookie two years later.

I’ve been hooked into Green Day ever since. I’ve only seen them live twice (most recently in 2013) because I’ve rarely been able to afford concert tickets, and even rarer did I have someone to go with me (though I did go solo to that last show), but I own every album, two t-shirts (including a limited edition mock-up of the Nimrod album art with the titular sticker over Donald Trump’s face from his mug shot), what little guitar I know comes mostly from their songbooks, I kicked the shit out of their Rock Band game, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown were the soundtracks to my 20s (righteous rage settling into hope for the future despite empirical evidence to the contrary), and one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given was a ticket to see the musical American Idiot on Broadway while Billie Joe Armstrong was playing the role of St. Jimmy. Hell, I’ve been so locked in that I literally rattled off about a half-dozen referential titles for this review just from the Nimrod album track list while walking home from the theatre last night (“Nice Guys Finish Last,” “Time of Your Life,” “Last Ride In,” “King for a Day,” etc.).

Suffice to say, you can take my critique of this film either from the standpoint of having my bona fides well in order, or with a huge grain of salt due to a longstanding bias. Either is fine. I admit that I had a hard time separating my fandom from the product on screen. That said, I feel I can speak at least somewhat objectively on the matter, and keep things in perspective. Yes, I was lip syncing along with pretty much every single song that played over the course of the film (save the original cut, “I’m Never Gonna R.I.P.”), but I’ve also seen thousands of movies in my life, and can still recognize superlative elements and shortcomings in order to judge the project honestly.

All of this is to say that I absolutely loved Nimrods, but I’m not so colored by my preferences to just gush and give it an “A” grade on that affection alone. On the whole, this is a pretty standard coming-of-age road trip flick, but it knows how to have fun with the very genre tropes it employs, which is ultimately what makes it into an enjoyable experience even if you’re not a fan of/indifferent to the group’s music.

The film begins in Kansas City (apparently on the Kansas side), where teenagers Tommy (Mason Thames from The Black Phone) and Fred (Kylr Coffman, not a typo) casually skip out on school a few days before Christmas. The two slackers, along with their straight-laced pal Chad (Ryan Foust), form a three-piece punk band called Analog Dogs, their gimmick being that they insist on using non-digital media to record their music and youthful exploits. Tommy and Fred are stoked when Chad informs them he got tickets to a Green Day show for the holiday, but are then crestfallen when their goody two-shoes drummer says he’s taking his parents to the concert. However, the band is doing a meet-and-greet at the local record store, so Tommy, using his late father’s four-track equipment, leads the group in making a demo tape of a song called “Bored,” which they give to their rock idols later that day. Tré Cool playfully calls Tommy’s phone (the number is written on the tape) to josh him a bit, but it’s clearly the peak of their young lives.

Back home, we get a glimpse of Tommy’s disaffected life. His mother Jodi (Jenna Fischer; her husband Lee Kirk directed and co-wrote the film with Armstrong) is supportive of his musical ambitions but strict on his need to find direction in his life. Older brother Wayne (Keen Ruffalo, son of Mark) acts as a surrogate father, but still has a touch of sibling rivalry in him, especially when Tommy pranks him while he’s putting up Christmas lights on the roof.

That brotherly spirit comes to a head when Wayne, alongside his buddy Keith (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), decides to give Tommy a little comeuppance. They call Tommy, pretending to be Cool, and tell him that Green Day wants Analog Dogs to open for them at their New Year’s Eve show in Los Angeles. Unfortunately for them, Tommy takes the joke quite seriously. Rounding up Fred and Chad, Tommy steals Wayne’s car (he literally bought a yellow taxi to use for a ride share driver gig) and they head for Hollywood.

Thus begins our (halfway) cross-country adventure, where the boys get into various shenanigans. With Wayne, Keith, and Chad’s mom Deborah (Jolene Blalock, aka T’Pol from Star Trek: Enterprise, here credited simply as “Jolene”) in pursuit, our misfit trio encounters all manner of familiar and formulaic experiences along the way. The dimwitted Fred unwittingly sabotages their car by filling it up with diesel fuel. A desperate stop at a biker bar leads to a successful performance of the one “country” song they know (“Dominated Love Slave” from Kerplunk, an underrated and hilarious gem) and a new set of wheels. A chance encounter with this movie’s version of the manic pixie dream girl, called Olivia (Mckenna Grace), takes them to an outdoor party where romance and mushroom trips bloom. A random stay at a motel gives us an out-of-nowhere creepy turn from Fred Armisen. It all culminates with the fateful New Year’s show, and a test of the boys’ bonds.

Absolutely none of this is new, but there are (non-Mckenna) grace notes in how they’re handled. Sean Gunn shows up as a deus ex machina mechanic at the biker bar, ready and able to fix the cab, only to be far too drunk to function, so the boys get a different ex machina in the form of a conveniently available abandoned ice cream truck in the parking lot. Olivia sings with all the rebellious fury that great punk performers have, but she doesn’t drop everything to go with Tommy because she has actual responsibilities that she realizes are important. The detour to the motel is a very odd, but very funny, way to dispense with the requisite third act conflict between Tommy and Fred. All three of our leads are clearly stand-ins for Armstrong, Cool, and Mike Dirnt when they were first getting started back in the 80s, but they lampshade it by making references to the Ramones instead, and Chad’s look is clearly designed to be more reminiscent of McLovin from Superbad. There’s a cheeky awareness of the clichés that are being used, so the script takes a bit of joy in sending them up while still leaning on them, and without breaking the fourth wall.

This is aided by the fully committed performances of our Dogs. Thames infuses Tommy with that frustrated, hormone-driven passion we all experienced during our teenage years. “We’ve got nothing but choices!” he pleads to the others during a desperate moment, and that’s a great mission statement for Green Day’s music on the whole. Whether in their 20s or 50s, the band’s catalog has always had a well-balanced mix of anti-establishment angst, reverence for musical roots, and a desire to simply enjoy a life unencumbered, especially when you’ve got so much time ahead of you to do so. There’s something so liberating in the momentary and basic bits of fleeting insanity like crowd surfing or throwing mud in a mosh pit, and that’s what Armstrong and company have always been able to key in on. Thames translates that perfectly.

Alongside him, Coffman and Foust get a decent amount of mileage out of their relatively one-dimensional characters. Fred is stupid. We get that. But the reason he works is because Coffman is game for every harebrained antic that ensues. He tells terrible jokes with a sock puppet. He trips on shrooms and thinks he’s invisible. He utterly fails at math. He is 100% a dumb stoner, but Coffman refuses to let the gag sit. If he’s going to be an idiot, he’s at least going to be a memorable one and have a blast while doing it. As for Chad, yeah, it kind of beggars belief that someone so innocent would hang out with delinquents and be in their band, but at the same time, look at a character like Butters from South Park. Sure, he’s eternally afraid of the consequences of stepping out of line, but he still reluctantly goes with it all, knowing it’s likely only temporary, and if he doesn’t, he’ll always wonder what might have been. He’s a timid little bunny hanging out with two rambunctious foxes, which means he’ll probably eventually get eaten alive, but he’ll at least have lived every second possible until then, and the resolution of his storyline is almost too perfect for words.

Honestly, there were times when the most unbelievable thing about this movie was that there are so many young fans this die-hard about the band. Rock and roll as a genre has been slowly dying since 2005, and even what can be considered punk is being subsumed by the corporate music structure. It was genuinely dispiriting to see the Live Nation logo before the movie properly started, and at the last Green Day show I went to, half the audience under 30 was only there because they cut a track for one of the Twilight movies. When Armstrong is looked upon as more of a “dad rock” icon (his son Jakob performs with Grace’s band in the film, and he co-wrote the original songs) than the vanguard of a fed up generation, it strains credulity somewhat that there would be this many teens and young adults clamoring for their music in 2026. If it’s real, then I’m overjoyed, because it means that there’s still hope for good, conscientious music, as well as rock writ large, but I confess I haven’t seen it. Had this film been set 20 years earlier, it would make total sense, but in the here and now it can come off as wishful thinking at best and self-delusion at worst.

For what this movie is, it’s almost like a time capsule out of its own time. Fans of the band will definitely enjoy the hits that play throughout, as well as some well-chosen deeper cuts. Fans of the road trip comedy will see shades of pictures like Detroit Rock City, and I think compare this one quite favorably with it. Those who remember (or currently experience) the detached nature of the slacker/punk life will see themselves in the characters, and if they’re old enough they might even notice similarities to the Beavis & Butt-Head video game where the entire purpose was to get our favorite animated morons into a GWAR concert.

More importantly, though, those willing to engage with the material will pick up something more than just a feature-length music video/tribute to one of the more enduring bands of the 90s. I concede that for some it will be difficult to do that, especially if you’re tired of the familiar plot beats, or if Jodi seems a bit too perfect because she’s the director’s wife, or because the more emotional moments are conveyed entirely through dialog rather than action, or if you realize that any one of the actions Tommy et al take would land any of us in the real world behind bars, or if you just don’t find Fred’s goofs all that funny. These are all valid criticisms, and if it sours you on the proceedings, I totally get it.

These are the reasons why the flick doesn’t get top marks, but they didn’t bother me too much, because I was enchanted by the bigger picture. Green Day is a band that literally changed my life, and while I crack and dunk on a lot of other music and performers, especially modern mass-produced pop, I can’t deny someone who’s had that same crystallizing feeling. If a Britney Spears album inspired you to be a better person, I’ll still quibble with the actual quality of the songs and her decades of poor behavior, but I’ll never try to take that connection away from you or denigrate the impact it had on you.

That’s why a film like Nimrods can still resonate, even with a younger crowd that doesn’t have that emotional link to the band. Part of the ethos of having limitless possibilities is what drives their music, but also speaks to the universal lived experience of young people. Why not take the big chance? Why not let yourself believe something that’s too good to be true once in a while? Why not trust in yourself and your friends? Why not see what life has to offer, even if and when it’s not what you expected? Before long, you’ll find yourself in Jodi’s position, setting boundaries and protecting what’s truly important, or you’ll be in the same place as Green Day itself, preserving a legacy while laying out a loving pathway for those who will take over, becoming elders worth respecting. That’s why the movie works. It many not be nearly as revolutionary as it presents itself to be – which can be said about the band itself, including from super fans like me – but it has its place, and it has something meaningful to say, even if, like Armstrong’s vocals, it takes a couple of times to fully comprehend it.

Grade: B+

Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? Are you a fan of Green Day, and if so, what’s your favorite song? Have you ever successfully sneaked into a concert? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!