'Nimrods' Review
- Tiffany McLaughlin
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Release Date: 08/14/26 [Cinemas]
Genre: Comedy. Drama. Music.
MPAA: Rated R.
Distributor: Inaugural Entertainment.
The Verdict: A Mistake
Three high schoolers in their own punk rock band, Analog Dogs, set out for LA thinking they are opening for Green Day’s New Year's Eve show. It’s a modern coming-of-age road trip story with a ’90s Green Day coat of paint. Nimrods immediately came off as a gimmick movie from the trailer. Being a lifelong Green Day fan, I pressed on, only for my hopes to be dashed upon seeing the title card proudly proclaiming Nimrods as a Live Nation film. Not very punk rock if you ask me.
Analog Dogs are obviously a stand-in to represent Green Day in their early days. The story is inspired by the band’s struggles to survive as full-time musicians before making it big. The source material can make for an inspiring story. But unfortunately, the insane plot conveniences read as if there were a contractual obligation not to make Green Day look bad. The members of Analog Dogs have no character arc. They don’t learn, they don’t evolve, they don’t struggle. Everyone they meet loves their band. There’s a clear plot-driven goal, and while the overconfident teens ultimately don’t get exactly what they were after in the end, there’s also no lesson learned. There’s no challenge to overcome. Nimrods is basically just a series of vignettes full of ideas that someone thought would be cool to include in a punk rock movie, but those ideas don’t add up to make a real movie. It’s a mess. The ending shoehorns in a family-trauma storyline that’s not really the point of the film and is never fully explained.
Production-wise, there’s not much technical prowess to support an already half-baked screenplay. Jenna Fischer is supposed to be like a 90s mom in modern day, I guess? But really she’s just dressed up like Dana Carvey, and I simply don’t get it. During the concert scene, there is a jib shot scanning the crowd, where the camera awkwardly pans back and forth, expecting to cut to another camera, but it never does. I get that they filmed it as a real live show; you only get one take. But it’s as if the editor only got one pass at it. There’s simply no cinematic merit in this novice-level production.
The Jesus of Suburbia music video from 2005 is so dense with imagery and storytelling in a 12-minute runtime that Nimrods couldn’t even match a fraction of it in almost two hours: a swing and a miss.
