Green Day — The Boys Are Back In Town

The Boys Are Back In Town was produced by the same company responsible for the recently released Morrissey: From Where He Came To Where He Went — With And Without The Smiths DVD.

This two-DVD set features two documentaries originally made earlier this decade. The first, which was produced in 2002, is about the history of Green Day from their genesis as Sweet Children playing the legendary 924 Gilman Street club in Berkeley, Calif. to their days after releasing 2000's Warning.

The second focuses on their less successful (if you're comparing what those albums sold to 1994's Dookie, which has sold some 15 million copies worldwide) "middle years," which consist of 1995's Insomniac, 1997's Nimrod and Warning.

Both documentaries are unauthorized, and the first does not use any of Green Day's music. The second doesn't have this problem.

Unfortunately, just like the Morrissey DVD, this set falls victim to boringness, since it mostly consists of music journalists talking about the band's history and ends up being a bunch of boring talking heads sounding off. The only exception is Operation Ivy vocalist Jesse Michaels, whose presence single-handedly saves this package from falling into the mire.

The interviews don't reveal anything new and there's really nothing here you can't discover by reading anything in print or online about the band. Green Day super fans might dig this one, but there's a good chance everyone else will be really, really bored for 128 minutes.