Californian rock band Green Day has been a mainstay of American rock music for longer than I’ve been alive. The band, headlined by the iconic Billie Joe Armstrong, has endured generations of success and, in my opinion, is just as relevant as they ever were. I’ve never been a Green Day superfan, but I’ve always liked them and have respected what they’ve brought to the world of popular music. I was intrigued when I heard about Lee Kirk’s Nimrods last year when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it received some mild-to-moderate praise, but I made an effort to not learn much about the film because I always have a better time with something like this when I go in knowing as little as possible. I may not be a Green Day superfan, but my sister-in-law is. She’s seen them in concert 9 times, and is determined to make her 10th especially memorable. I figured if I was going to see this movie, I’d go with her. Imagine my surprise when I sat down in a movie theater yesterday and found myself enjoying it basically as much as she was. 

Nimrods is inspired by the band’s early touring days where they lived in a van, taking gigs where they could find them. We follow the Analog Dogs, an aspiring rock band made up of high school friends Tommy (Mason Thames), Fred (Kylr Coffman) and Chad (Ryan Foust). They’re ambitious and plucky, and have big dreams. They’re pranked by Tommy’s brother (Keen Ruffalo) and his friend (Ignacio Diaz-Silvero) into thinking they’re going to open a New Year’s Eve concert for Green Day in Los Angeles. Being idealistic, optimistic teenagers who don’t know any better, they find a way to travel from Kansas to California. Shenanigans and life lessons ensue. 

I was surprised to sit down in a theater for Nimrods and find an actual movie. Like a legit movie with performances that work, a witty and heartfelt script, and filmmaking with some actual vision. But really, as a fan of the road movie and the coming of age movie, I should’ve known I would enjoy this. Nimrods harkens back to classic road trip comedies of the 80s and early 90s. It’s very funny and charming. It has a loose, ragtag, Richard Linklater kind of energy to it, and perhaps most surprisingly, it feels authentic. 

It helps that actors who actually look like teenagers were cast, but also you totally believe this mismatched group of friends sharing a common dream. I was convinced in the beginning of the movie (until around 20 minutes in when someone whips out a cell phone) that this was kind of like a revisionist history period piece set in the mid to early ‘90s when Green Day was first becoming popular. The reason for this is because all of these actors look like they could’ve existed in the mid-1990s. The film is more emotionally based on the band’s early days than anything else, but the story and the vibes are timeless. 

Mason Thames has had a busy few years after headlining the live action How to Train Your Dragon reboot, The Black Phone 2 and he has the buzzy Sundance darling Idiots coming in the next few weeks. I think he’s a very promising, very gifted young actor who has the potential to have a big career if he keeps making interesting choices as an actor. His Nimrods performance earns him enough goodwill that I’ll forgive him for starring in a Colleen Hoover adaptation. Kylr Coffman and Ryan Foust star as Tommy’s bandmates and I’ve never seen either actor previously, but they both have such distinct presences and clearly understand these characters very well. Neither character is particularly well realized, but Coffman and Foust have a lot of personality and they more than make up for some shortcomings that might be on the page.

We’ve got a weirdly stacked supporting cast for a film this small. In 2022, Lee Kirk appeared on Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey’s Office Ladies podcast, announcing the plan for this movie. Fischer and Kinsey must have heard something they liked that day, because both appear in the film, Fischer as Tommy’s mother and Kinsey as the owner of a bar they stop at along the way. Keen Ruffalo (son of Marc) shows up as Tommy’s older brother Wayne. Ruffalo doesn’t make much of an impression for the majority, but has a knockout moment near the end that stuck with me. I’m definitely excited to see him do more.

Mckenna Grace, who also starred alongside Mason Thames in the beleaguered, aforementioned Colleen Hoover adaptation Regretting You, appears as Olivia, a fellow musician who Tommy meets on the road and immediately falls for. Grace has some nice moments too, and it’s easy to see how she and Thames became a real-life couple. And of course, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool show up in extended cameos, and there’s the prerequisite third act musical setpiece fans are gonna love.

Cinematographer David Robert Jones shot this. He’s mostly worked in television and doesn’t have a ton of memorable film credits to his name, but now he’s got one. Nimrods was shot digitally, which is surprising because the look of the film has a graininess to it that tricked me into thinking it was shot on actual film stock. It has this vintage, analog kind of look the entire way through that certainly adds to why the film works overall. I don’t have much to say about Alec Puro’s score because you don’t come away from this film thinking about the score. You leave humming the soundtrack, which of course is about 97% Green Day songs. And the script manages to not feel like manufactured story beats purposely designed to use certain Green Day songs. The needle drops never feel too on the nose, and I was honestly a little surprised by that.

Lee Kirk has worked with Green Day previously on the film Ordinary World, which I honestly am not sure if I saw. That film is not particularly well regarded among fans or critics, but I think Nimrods will influence some viewers (myself included) to revisit the film with this new hindsight. Because Nimrods isn’t just a competently made film, I would say it hits most of the notes it aims to. The script has this unfocused shagginess to it, but that can work in a road movie. If there’s a problem, maybe it’s about 15 minutes too long. This is a full two hours long, and it does feel like it from time to time, but overall the good is decidedly outweighing the not as good.

Overall, I found Nimrods to be a thoroughly delightful late summer surprise. The performances range between solid and very good, the script has a lot of laughs and a surprising amount of heart. Is this more or less a nostalgia play, or an advertisement for the film’s accompanying soundtrack? Probably, yes. But honestly, I was having too good a time to really be bothered by any of that. I have no doubt Nimrods will be a total joy to behold for the generations of fans who have connected with Green Day’s music, but I’m proof the film will work on casual fans as well. I’ll tell you one thing, this sure beats the cliched, standard rock star biopic we’d usually get instead of a movie like this. I wouldn’t quite say I had the time of my life, but maybe something kinda like that.