NIMRODS Review: A Green Day-Fueled Coming-of-Age Story About Choosing the Life You Want

There is a line in NIMRODS that stuck with me long after the credits rolled:

“We’re teenagers. We have nothing but choices.”

It’s a deceptively simple observation in a movie packed with stolen cars, broken-down ice cream trucks, questionable mushrooms, punk-rock dreams and, of course, Green Day.

But it also gets to the heart of what NIMRODS is actually about.

On the surface, NIMRODS is a coming-of-age road-trip comedy about three teenage musicians chasing the kind of opportunity that sounds completely reasonable when you’re 17 and absolutely insane to everyone else. Underneath all of that, though, is a story about choosing who you want to be when seemingly every possible version of your life is still sitting in front of you.

And somehow, amid all the chaos, it has a surprising amount of heart.

A Punk-Rock Pipe Dream

Mason Thames leads NIMRODS as a teenager convinced his band, Analog Dogs, could actually become something.

After recording a demo using equipment that once belonged to his late father, he and his bandmate manage to get the cassette directly into the hands of Green Day. Unfortunately, his older brother sees an opportunity for a prank and convinces them that Green Day heard the demo — and wants Analog Dogs to open their New Year’s Eve show in Los Angeles.

So naturally, they decide to go.

What follows is exactly the kind of increasingly ridiculous road trip you would expect.

Cars are stolen. Cars are destroyed. Parents are called. A biker bar becomes an impromptu venue. Fred Armisen operates a deeply questionable motel. An ice cream truck becomes transportation. One band member quits before deciding that maybe doing the responsible thing isn’t always the right thing.

NIMRODS isn’t particularly interested in reinventing the coming-of-age movie, and you’ll probably predict several of its major beats before they happen.

The surprising part is how little that matters.

You Know Where It’s Going — And That’s Okay

Predictability can kill a movie when the destination is the only thing it has going for it. NIMRODS works because getting there is the point.

The chemistry between its young leads makes Analog Dogs feel like exactly what they’re supposed to be: three teenage boys who can irritate the absolute hell out of one another and would still cross the country together without thinking twice.

Each of them is also making a choice.

One genuinely believes this ridiculous little band could become something. Another is essentially along for the ride because these are his people. And the most cautious member of the group eventually decides that, for once, he’s willing to say screw the consequences and find out what happens.

Their dream happens to involve Green Day, but you don’t have to be a Green Day fan for that feeling to work.

Swap Green Day for whatever artist you would have done something monumentally stupid to see when you were 17.

That’s the fantasy.

What if you actually went?

The Movie Finds Its Heart in Grief

Where NIMRODS becomes more than a collection of road-trip hijinks, though, is in the relationship between Thames’ character and his older brother.

The absence of their father hangs over the family without the movie constantly stopping to explain it. Jenna Fischer plays their mother as someone who loves her children while still visibly carrying her own grief, and the movie largely trusts its audience to understand what this family has lost.

That restraint works.

Eventually, the resentment between the brothers finally breaks through.

Thames’ character remembers his father’s funeral and the people who promised they would be there for him. His brother was one of them. But from his perspective, that promise hasn’t been kept. His brother doesn’t check on him. He doesn’t ask how he’s doing. He isn’t the person he promised he would be.

And you’re ready to agree with him.

Then his brother points out something painfully obvious that nobody — including his younger brother — has really considered:

Who was there for him?

He wasn’t much older when their father died. Everyone expected him to become the big brother his grieving sibling needed while he was still a kid trying to figure out how to survive the same loss.

It’s easily one of the strongest moments in the movie, largely because neither brother is wrong.

Green Day Isn’t Just the Gimmick

Obviously, if you’re a Green Day fan, NIMRODS gives you plenty to enjoy.

Their music runs through the movie, and the eventual payoff at the concert delivers exactly the kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy the story has been building toward.

But using Green Day also works surprisingly well with the emotional side of the movie.

For all the band’s punk-rock energy, some of Green Day’s best music has always carried an undercurrent of nostalgia, loneliness and growing up. NIMRODS understands that and lets the music support its quieter moments rather than treating the band as nothing more than a celebrity cameo attached to the premise.

The concert may be the destination, but it isn’t really what the movie is about.

It’s About Having Nothing but Choices

That’s why that line stayed with me.

“We’re teenagers. We have nothing but choices.”

As adults, we’re constantly chasing some version of that feeling.

Life becomes jobs and schedules and responsibilities and all the reasons something isn’t practical. Eventually, making one choice means closing the door on another.

But these kids haven’t reached that point yet.

They can steal a taxi and try to cross the country because somebody told them Green Day wants them to open a show. They can quit the band. They can come back. They can decide their friends are worth getting in trouble for. They can believe the terrible demo they recorded might actually be the beginning of something.

Maybe Analog Dogs goes nowhere.

Maybe this becomes the story they tell for the rest of their lives.

They don’t know yet.

That’s the point.

NIMRODS may follow a familiar road, and there are moments when you’ll know exactly which turn it’s about to take. Some characters get more room to develop than others, with McKenna Grace’s character in particular feeling less essential than the central trio.

But the movie knows what it wants to be.

It’s funny. It’s nostalgic. It’s occasionally ridiculous. And when it slows down long enough to let its characters actually feel something, it can be unexpectedly affecting.

Green Day fans will undoubtedly get an extra kick out of the ride.

But NIMRODS isn’t really asking whether you’ve ever wanted to meet Green Day.

It’s asking whether you remember being young enough to believe you could get in the car, go somewhere impossible and figure out the consequences when you got there.

And maybe whether some part of you still wants to.