“Nimrods,” a road trip comedy about high-school burnouts in a punk-rock band, includes a number of juvenile exploits and episodes of interstate adventure that strain credulity: At one point, the boys (Mason Thames, Kylr Coffman and Ryan Foust) enter a rough-looking highway biker bar that happens to be holding a Battle of the Bands contest at that exact moment with one free spot remaining, which they summarily win, to name one example. It’s the sort of film where whimsical happenstance verges on outright fantasy.
But the most laughably implausible aspect of “Nimrods” is built into the premise: The highest aspiration of its teenage punk-rocker heroes is to open for Green Day, the highly commercial pop-punk band of 50-somethings that the kids regard with reverence. Fooled by an older brother into believing that they’ve been tapped to open for the band on New Year’s Eve, the boys take the Analog Dogs, their lo-fi garage trio, on the road to meet their heroes, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool, who appear in the film as themselves. “You’re opening for Green Day?” their peers coo, awe-struck. The climax is, of course, a Green Day show.
Green Day remain immensely popular and commercial, and “Nimrods,” directed by Lee Kirk, caters overtly to fans. But like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Rocketman,” and “Michael,” “Nimrods” is a rock biopic whose primary purpose is to bolster the mythology of the artist-subject. Needless to say, Green Day produced the movie — because the only world in which self-respecting punks would care this much about Green Day is a world carefully designed to flatter them.
Nimrods Rated R for strong language, teenage drug use and sexual innuendo. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.
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