The band’s widespread fame gave Armstrong the opportunity to collaborate with artists like Iggy Pop, Lonely Island and The Go-Go’s. Green Day’s third album Dookie thrust the band into the mainstream and Armstrong became a household name. Armstrong’s most well-known work is obviously with Green Day, but he’s also a member of Pinhead Gunpowder, Foxboro Hot Tubs, The Network and others. When Armstrong’s mother remarried a man he and his five siblings didn’t care for, he took to music as a means to express himself and feel understood. Armstrong’s brothers introduced him to punk music at a young age, and he now cites bands like The Replacements and Hüsker Dü as significant influences.Īrmstrong met Mike Dirnt and became fast friends before forming the band Sweet Children at age 14 before eventually adopting the Green Day moniker in 1989. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” was written in memorial to him. Armstrong was influenced early on by his father, a jazz musician, who tragically succumbed to cancer in 1982 when Armstrong was ten years old.
Born in 1972, Armstrong showed a remarkable interest in music from a young age, as evidenced by the fact that he recorded his first song, ‘Look For Love’, at the tender age of five. So, Ordinary World is worth a play for curious parties, but it deviates from Green Day’s finest work in that you’ll probably only want to experience it once.Billie Joe Armstrong is the charismatic singer, multi-instrumentalist and frontman for Green Day. He’s definitely serviceable as an actor, and we would definitely like to see him perform in roles that deviate from his own reality in the future. Outside of compulsory feel-good family moments, nothing particularly emotionally compelling happens, and perhaps it’s because Ordinary World features a world that’s a touch too ordinary, filled with people who don’t really provide a reason to root for them one way or the other.Īs one might expect, this movie’s biggest audience is likely to be Green Day fans who are curious to see what it’s like to have their favorite singer star in a movie. Though Ordinary World boasts a strong supporting cast-including Fred Armisen, Judy Greer, Selma Blair, Dallas Roberts, Chris Messina, Brian Baumgartner, and Kevin Corrigan-there isn’t really a strong character to be found. Those can sometimes run long and the story can kind of stagnate at times, sure, but they are still worthwhile for their charismatic, complex characters. With this in mind, it’s not his fault that the plot is not especially memorable, like a weaker Judd Apatow entry. However, at no time is his performance awkward or uncomfortable he plays the role well and is completely believable as an aging rocker running in place while looking back wistfully on a more exciting past. It feels especially difficult to gauge Armstrong’s acting muscles based on this role, because playing a relatively ordinary character that feels close to his reality, he doesn’t have much opportunity to flex them. It’s helpful that the role isn’t too far removed from Armstrong’s actual life, albeit a far less fruitful version of the superstar’s IRL timeline: Instead of being credited with bringing punk music to a wider mainstream audience and eventually being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Perry Miller’s band is in the midst of a ten-year indefinite hiatus, a break that seems more definite by the day as he settles into family life and working at his family’s hardware store.
In Ordinary World, which will see a video on demand and limited theatrical release on October 14, the punk rocker is tasked with playing the main protagonist, but how well does he pull it off?
BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG ORDINARY WORLD MOVIE
His desire to perform and entertain across multifarious media is clear, and now Armstrong has been given the chance to carry his own movie as the lead actor. Jimmy in American Idiot, the musical based on the band’s eponymous album, and he’s acted in films like This Is 40 and Like Sunday, Like Rain.
Yes, he’s the frontman of Green Day, perhaps the most important rock band of the past 20 years, but he also dabbles in acting.
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