Final Rating: 2/5
Lee Kirk’s Nimrods is as close as you can get to a Green Day biopic without being a Green Day biopic. A trio of high school boys in a band unknowingly find themselves on the wrong end of a prank that sends them across the country to open for Green Day on New Year’s Eve.
Tommy (Mason Thames) is the de facto leader of Analog Dogs and never wavers from his belief that their big break is right around the corner. The band’s singer/guitarist is committed to a fault, despite the objectively bad track record their band has including getting booed offstage during a recent talent show.
The other Analog Dogs, bassist Fred (Kylr Coffman) and drummer Chad (Ryan Foust), are often dragged along by Tommy’s passion, but lack the commitment of their frontman. When Tommy’s brother (Keen Ruffalo) pranks them with a call claiming Green Day wants them to be their opener on New Year’s Eve, Tommy, Fred, and a reluctant Chad steal Tommy’s brother’s taxi and head to Los Angeles.
Kirk’s screenplay, co-written with Green Day, struggles to pin down the tone it wants to convey. The driving force of the film is PG-rated, coming-of-age fun, despite being an R-rated film. Most of the humor comes across forced: staying at a hotel owned by Fred Armisen giving a performance better suited for Scary Movie, Tommy being unable to count to twenty-seven, or the many instances of the band being referred to as “Anal Dogs”.
When Nimrods tries to shift into something dramatic, it typically does so by making Tommy unlikable. His decisions drive the film forward, backward, and sideways with little regard for his companions. It becomes hard to root for Analog Dogs’ success, or at least Tommy’s. Tommy refuses to take responsibility for his choices and the movie doesn’t hold him accountable, either.
Instead, his behavior is excused via an underdeveloped backstory related to his father. The only other source of drama is Chad. He’s treated like a punching bag for the vast majority of the film in a role reminiscent of DJ Qualls in Road Trip. Chad’s climactic scene is shot and handled better than Tommy’s, but receives a similarly hollow explanation as to why it occurs.
The band’s journey across the country to LA is punctuated with side quests. The highlight of those is a party they attend after Tommy flirts with Olivia (McKenna Grace) at a gas station. The musical performances at the party are the film’s best and Grace’s chemistry with Thames is stronger than any other pairing in the movie. Olivia even gets a nice moment with Fred at the party calming him down from his mushroom trip. However, she exits the movie as swiftly as she enters it.
Nimrods feels like Green Day and Lee Kirk were going through a checklist of things they saw in road trip movies strung together by a weak plot. The group has a falling out? Check. Taking advantage of the weakest member? Check. Car breaks down? Check. Creepy hotel owner? Check. Meet cute flirtation? Check. The film’s segmented nature and tonal imbalance prevents it from ever developing a rhythm.
The supporting cast is filled with previous collaborators of Lee Kirk who all do their best in limited roles. Sean Gunn’s dry humor as a mechanic works well. Angela Kinsey runs the seedy bar that showcases the film’s strong production design. The Mister Freezie ice cream truck that Kinsey’s Wilma lets them use, unfortunately, has more personality than any of the protagonists.
The second half of the movie has more life than the first. Between the party with Olivia and finally arriving in Los Angeles, the band’s antics on screen become more compelling. Lee Kirk’s previous two films (2016’s Ordinary World and 2012’s The Giant Mechanical Man) struggled to rise above formulaic screenplays. Nimrods suffers from the same problem. The narrative and emotional hooks fail to snag, but the familiarity makes Nimrods easy to watch.
Thank you to Inaugural Entertainment and The Lede Company for the screener.
