Director: Lee Kirk
Writer: Lee Kirk
Stars: Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman, Ryan Foust
Synopsis: Three buddies drive cross-country in a van, causing mayhem and mischief while racing to LA for their big break: opening for Green Day on New Year’s Eve.
It’s hard to be a dreamer. For most of our lives, those of us who pursue passions, are nodded at politely by those who down shifted and chose a more traditional and risk averse life path. For a teenage dreamer, not to be what they want and do what they feel they need to do with their life is absolutely unfathomable. This yearning and need often makes for a great coming-of-age story. Nimrods succeeds in many ways, but has some flaws that get in the way of a good story.
It’s strange to think of an intelligent member of the band as a flaw, but it really is. To have Chad (Ryan Foust), the bookish drummer, who doesn’t really fit in with Tommy (Mason Thames) or Fred (Kylr Coffman), repeat that this idea that they would be opening for Green Day is too good to be true, is like a squealing sound in your car you don’t like, but don’t want to get fixed. You know it needs taking care of, but to do that would put a damper on just making sure you get from A to B. It’s annoying after a while to have the issue repeated logically so many times. We understand, and know for a fact as we saw Wayne (Keen Ruffalo), Tommy’s older brother, and his friend Keith (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) play the prank, that this situation is a fool’s errand on the part of these teens, but it’s more enjoyable to watch them have fun failing. We want to see that their climb to this level of gig will be hard fought and that they will have some setbacks more than we want to have our nagging thoughts personified.
Writer and director Lee Kirk’s script does address this idea, though. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Tommy knows he’s not actually opening for Green Day. It’s not completely farfetched that he would take his dream this far. The fact that Tommy’s father, whom he still worships, is gone. The fact that he wishes to not feel like he’s drowning in mediocrity and tedium. The fact that music makes him feel better than anything else in his world, makes him want to believe in this break. It’s sweet and heartbreaking to watch him not be able to fully process this time in his life. It keeps the shenanigans grounded to know that he’s going through a really rough time.
Nimrods’ most major flaw, though, is that it has one sequence that nearly takes you out of the story completely. Any road trip story like this is going to have some moments that stretch credulity. They can be funny and easy to brush off. Yet, having a cameo with Fred Armisen as a creepy motel operator, or possibly an escaped mental patient masquerading as a motel operator, completely takes us out of the film. Out of context of the rest of the film, it’s the funniest sequence. Armisen is firing on all cylinders and is in his element as a stone cold weirdo. Within the context of the film, though, it’s just completely unnecessary and ruins the grounded wackiness of everything that took place before it. There’s an important scene in the middle, but everything around it is just fluff for fluff’s sake. It’s too bad that they felt they needed this because the film really does well building on the drama and comedy of the situation otherwise.
Where Lee Kirk shines as a director is in the musical sequences. It’s fun to watch the Anal OG Dogs, always misread as Anal Dogs (the band pronounces it analog dogs), shred in the garage as they lay down their demo track. The Steadicam shifts frenetically between members as they rock out. It’s a bit scary at first to watch them be utter punks at a country roadhouse as they play Green Day’s “Dominated Love Slave.” Though, the crowd gets into it and the camera spends much time with the audience singing along as they get into the joy of the song. It’s an absolute blast to watch the underground punk show at the junkyard, which includes pouring rain that turns into mud-caked chaos. This one is shot from the crowd angle to make us feel like we’re there. Then there’s the final show at the Hollywood Palladium. This one is shot like a standard concert film, but it works for the context and is fun to watch Green Day do what they do best.
It’s hard not to like Nimrods. It’s a film about dreamers and people that know they have something that they need to get out into the world. It’s flawed and rough around the edges, but many would say the same about punk rock. As you can imagine, being a film that concerns Green Day, Nimrods does end with a final sequence set to the song “Good Riddance (Time of Your LIfe),” which is maudlin, on the nose, and saccharine, but fits the catharsis of the story perfectly. Nimrods is not one of the great coming-of-age films, but it is an enjoyable one, flaws and all.
