I Did Not Have The Time Of My Life Watching Nimrods

I laughed exactly once while watching Green Day's new movie Nimrods, which is dubiously billed as a comedy. It quacks like a comedy, anyway. Characters make outlandish, insanely dumb decisions that result in slapstick gags. They speak in what are clearly supposed to be funny voices. Various quasi-famous comedy types make cameos that are somehow too short and too long at the same time. I didn't laugh at any of that. I did laugh, however, at the moment when all hope is lost and our teenage loser heroes appear to be heading back home to Kansas City, their dream of opening for Green Day unfulfilled, and the opening guitar notes from "Wake Me Up When September Ends" suddenly crash their way onto the soundtrack like the Kool-Aid Man. I don't think I was supposed to laugh at that, but it was pretty funny.I promise, I was ready to like Nimrods, even if the movie seemed like a hopeless calamity — Green Day, a great and impactful rock band without a whole lot of cinematic legacy or appeal, enlisting the help of Live Nation, perhaps the least punk multinational conglomerate on the face of the planet, to make their Hollywood dreams come true. Grossness was built into its DNA. On the other hand...