In every generation, there is a film about kids wanting to go to a concert. It doesn’t matter which generation. There are always going to be kids wanting to see their favorite musical artist perform, regardless of who that artist is, whether they’re real, fictional, or otherwise. While the concept certainly isn’t new, there’s something to be said for being able to correctly follow a formula. I know some critics don’t believe in formulaic filmmaking, but flip that into cooking. If somebody is following a recipe to perfection, then all of your meals are delicious because that’s what the cookbook is intended for. Sure, your home chef may not be striking out and trying to find crazy and creative new ways to feed you, but at the same time, there’s a skill level involved in being able to follow some of these recipes right down to the T. Being formulaic isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re good at it.
Nimrods is formulaic, but the good kind of formulaic. It hits all of the right beats. It feels like a film that could have been made in almost any decade. It’s not tremendously specific to 2026 and isn’t packed full of a bunch of Gen Alpha references where the kids are running around doing TikTok challenges or talking in overly pretentious dialogue that either sounds like the writer is trying too hard to make them sound like real teenagers or has elevated them completely out of their own demographic. Although, there is one scene where one of the friends has a conversation with his friend’s mom that, in a million years, I never would have had with any of my friends’ parents. And if my friend had asked that question, I honestly don’t know what I would have done.
Nimrods stars Mason Thames as Tommy, alongside Kylr Coffman as Fred and Ryan Foust as Chad. I’m incredibly happy that Thames is continuing to expand his career following The Black Phone, for which he was terrific, and I had him in my Best Actor lineup in the year of its release. He’s turned out to be a young actor worth investing in, and Hollywood is doing just that by throwing him numerous roles in major franchises. He already landed How to Train Your Dragon, which has an upcoming sequel, and he’s also scheduled to play Link in the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie. This is a kid Hollywood is banking on.
That makes it a little weird that Nimrods isn’t being distributed by a major studio and is instead being sent out into the world by one of these new upstart distributors. That didn’t work out too well for Row K, which tried really hard last year to figure out what it meant to be a distribution vessel and has since jettisoned its remaining projects to other studios. Hopefully things work out better here. Sadly, Nimrods is exactly the kind of movie that feels destined to eventually end up on a streaming service, which makes it even stranger that one didn’t pick it up in the first place. This feels exactly like the kind of movie Hulu would release, much like they did with Pizza Movie earlier this year, targeted at a very specific demographic.
Tommy is a high schooler who has a garage band with Fred and Chad called the Analog Dogs. They’re just barely starting out, and somehow, because of the way they write the band’s name, everyone keeps mistaking it for something far more raunchy than it actually is. It’s basically repeating the joke from That Thing You Do!, where the way the Wonders originally wrote their name caused people to keep mispronouncing it. Tommy and his friends are also obsessed with Green Day, who happen to be having a concert nearby, except Tommy doesn’t have a ticket.
Later, Green Day is revealed to be appearing at a local record store because Tommy lives in a place that still has record stores. Good for him. The Analog Dogs swing by the store hoping to get their demo into the hands of Green Day, which actually happens. They put their phone number on the back, and Tré Cool calls them from a no-caller-ID number just to joke around with the kids. It’s the kind of tiny interaction that means absolutely nothing to Green Day but everything to these three teenagers because, for them, this is their favorite band acknowledging that they exist.
When Tommy returns home, his older brother Wayne is frustrated because he’s been left to take down the Christmas lights by himself. So Wayne decides to have his friend prank Tommy by pretending to be Green Day calling to offer the Analog Dogs the chance to open for them at their New Year’s Eve concert in Los Angeles. Tommy completely buys it, and thus begins the road-trip portion of Nimrods as Tommy, Fred, and Chad decide they’re going to make their way from Kansas City to Los Angeles in three days. Of course, they don’t have a car, so Tommy steals Wayne’s, and suddenly we’re off on the kind of road trip where basically everything that can go wrong does.
This is where Nimrods really settles into its identity. The boys encounter drugs, alcohol, questionable adults, a battle of the bands and the general collection of catastrophes that you would expect from three teenagers traveling across the country without supervision. None of this is reinventing the road-trip comedy. If you’ve seen enough movies about teenagers piling into a vehicle and chasing some seemingly impossible goal, you can probably anticipate the general rhythm. But director Lee Kirk understands that the destination isn’t really the point. The movie works because Tommy, Fred and Chad are likable enough that you want to stay in the car with them. Thames may be the recognizable name of the trio, but Coffman and Foust are equally important because the friendship has to work or the entire movie falls apart.
It also helps tremendously that Green Day isn’t simply being used as a recognizable name slapped onto the poster. Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool were actually involved with the film, and the story is inspired by some of their experiences touring in a van before Dookie turned them into one of the biggest bands in the world. Their music is everywhere, which obviously gives Nimrods a considerable advantage if you’re already a Green Day fan. But I don’t think you necessarily have to be one for the movie to work. The band is almost interchangeable with whatever artist you were obsessed with when you were young enough to believe that getting into one concert could be the most important thing that ever happened to you.
The supporting cast is also surprisingly stacked for a movie this size, with Jenna Fischer, Angela Kinsey, Fred Armisen, and Mackenna Grace. Sadly, no audio description though. I didn’t expect it from an upstart like this, but I love to be pleasantly surprised. I think it might have been the first time they heard the words “audio description”. Perhaps on their next venture. It wasn’t a heavy deal breaker, as I followed this tried and true formula, but my least favorite sequence was the hotel, and perhaps AD would have made that make more sense. My favorite wasn’t even audio description related, it was the spot on decision to head to credits on Good Riddance. If you’re playing the Green Day hits, that has to be the one to end the film on, especially a film like this. Maybe one day, we’ll get a film version of the American Idiot musical.
That’s really where Nimrods won me over. There are movies where being predictable becomes a problem because they seem to be going through the motions. Nimrods knows exactly what kind of movie it is and executes that movie well. You know there will be fights between friends. You know there will be moments when getting to Los Angeles seems impossible. You know that eventually the truth about the prank has to come crashing down. And you know a movie this affectionate toward Green Day and these characters probably isn’t interested in leaving everyone miserable when the credits roll. The ingredients are sitting right there on the counter from the beginning. Lee Kirk isn’t hiding them. He just knows what to do with them.
I also appreciate that Nimrods understands something about being young and having an obsession that seems completely irrational to everybody older than you. Adults can tell these kids that driving across the country because you think you’re opening for Green Day is insane, and objectively, yes, it absolutely is. But when you’re that age, sometimes the stupid thing you do because you believe something extraordinary might happen becomes the story you’re still telling decades later. Nimrods doesn’t need to become the Citizen Kane of teenage road-trip comedies. It just needs to make you want the Analog Dogs to somehow get where they’re going, preferably without getting arrested, hospitalized or stranded somewhere in the middle of America.
Sometimes following the recipe works. Nimrods might not have invented any of its ingredients, but it mixes them together well enough to deliver a funny, sweet coming-of-age road movie with three young actors who have terrific chemistry and a Green Day soundtrack doing a considerable amount of heavy lifting. If every generation needs its movie about kids desperately trying to get to a concert, I suppose this one belongs to them. Don’t be an American Idiot. Check out Nimrods. You’ll have the time of your life.
Fresh: 7.8/10
