By Joanna Orland
Tommy (Mason Thames) and his band Analog Dogs are big fans of Green Day, and give them a demo tape at a meet-and-greet. Tommy’s older brother Wayne (Keen Ruffalo) pranks them with a phone call, pretending to invite the band to open for Green Day on New Year’s Eve. Desperate to believe it’s true, Tommy and the band steal Wayne’s car and drive from Kansas City to Los Angeles, intent on opening for their idols. Inspired by Green Day’s early days of touring before their breakout album Dookie, Nimrods tries but fails to capture the essence of the band.
‘Nimrods’ Doesn’t Live Up to the Green Day Vibe
The fun spirit of young Green Day is present in the young cast, with excellent performances from everyone involved. Even so, Nimrods itself lacks fun and feels stunted and ill-paced. It should be a tight and snappy 90 minutes – even though it is only 1h47m, it feels like it’s 3 hours long.
For a movie about punk, it’s so not punk. It needs to not just be about free-spirited, rebellious kids; it needs to be rebellious in itself, avoiding the clichés and stereotypes it repeatedly falls back on. There is only so much to do with the well-trodden premise of dumb kids falling for a prank and going on a road trip. The concept is tired, and so are the jokes peppered throughout. How many times can we make an “Anal Dogs” joke out of the Analog Dogs band name? (A few, apparently.)
‘Nimrods’ Relies Too Much on Nostalgia
Nimrods is based on Green Day’s scrappy touring days before Dookie, which was released in 1994. While the film is set in the modern day, there are so many old-fashioned elements that it easily could have been set in the early ‘90s (if it weren’t for the odd mobile phone here and there). The mixing and matching of old analog imagery and modern ideas is jarring. Wayne owns a yellow taxi for his Uber business. Tommy owns a flip phone for some reason, while he pulls out his dad’s old analog multitrack recorder. Music is played on record players more than it is via Bluetooth. Yet they specifically mention things like Uber and Apple Pay to remind the audience that this isn’t the ‘90s, but rather the present day. It is a sloppy rather than natural way to set up the vibe of the film.
If it were just the band who were into all of this old stuff, it could have worked. But the fact that the world is dated in its aesthetic and elements makes it confusing. It could have been more seamless if Analog Dogs were making a point of living out this nostalgia themselves, but having the rest of the world so easily conform to it just makes the audience doubt which era Nimrods is supposed to be set in. It takes the viewer out of the movie on too many occasions.
The music and intentions are great, but the film can’t quite capture the true spirit of Green Day. It’s an interesting approach for a biopic to not actually tell a specific story about the band, but Nimrods fails in its execution.
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Nimrods
Directed by Lee Kirk
Starring Mason Thames, Mckenna Grace, Kylr Coffman, Ryan Foust, Ignacio Diaz- Silverio, Keen Ruffalo, Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, Fred Armisen, Bobby Lee, Sean Gunn, and Green Day
In cinemas August 14th, 2026
