Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy      Director: Lee Kirk Cert: 16Starring: Mason Thames, Mckenna Grace, Jenna Fischer Running Time: 1 hr 56 minsWhere is the film adaptation of American Idiot: A Green Day Musical? We were promised a movie based on the hit Broadway show as long ago as 2011. That project may be lost to eternal development hell. In the meantime, we have Lee Kirk’s Nimrods: A Green Day Comedy, in which the Gen X favourites occupy the same sage, bookending space as Professor Yaffle in Bagpuss.It’s an oddball idea, adjacent to a proposition by Ludwig Wittgenstein. When is a Green Day film not a Green Day film? When it mostly follows three Missouri teenagers who set off for Los Angeles after a prank phone call convinces them they have been chosen to open for Green Day on New Year’s Eve?Tommy (How to Train Your Dragon’s Mason Thames), assisted by bandmates Chad (Kylr Coffman) and Fred (Ryan Foust), steals his older brother’s car and heads west, encountering an assortment of roadside detours that will feel familiar to anyone who has watched The Blues Brothers: an unlikely triumph at a country bar, a fleeting romance with fellow traveller Olivia (an underused McKenna Grace), motel misadventures, car trouble, and mounting tensions within the band before the inciting deception inevitably catches up with them.The script, co-written by the film-maker, Green Day, and frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, seldom strays from the familiar rhythms of the coming-of-age road comedy. Lee Kirk, who previously directed Billie Joe in Ordinary World, embraces a broad, episodic formula that delivers a chilled-out comedy with few surprises. The young cast, headed by the adept Thames, are thoroughly likeable. The Black Phone star channels understated determination, while Coffman and Foust provide contrary comic energy. Although Green Day conceived and produced the project, for much of the runtime, blink and you’ll miss them. Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool briefly appear at an autograph signing early in the film. Fans hoping for the time of their lives will have to sit tight for an extended finale built around a New Year’s Eve concert, followed by additional live performance footage after the credits. The soundtrack, comprising some 30 songs, including previously unreleased live recordings and the new single I’m Never Gonna RIP, dovetails with the film’s event-minded, one-night-only release pattern. [ Matt Johnson of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie: ‘If you’re not embarrassed by your old work, you haven’t grown’Opens in new window ]Could there be fewer longueurs? Sure. Could there be more Green Day? Absolutely. But it’s a generous project, rooted in the band’s do-it-yourself ethos, and powered by godfatherly intent. They’re happy to be the support act. In cinemas August 11th