In a summer heavy on films we’ve seen before in some shape or form, “Bad Counselors” is nothing if not a novelty: a faith-based message movie masquerading as a frat-bro farce, complete with PG-13 yocks and an “American Pie” alum cameo. Well, “masquerading” is perhaps unfair. Chris Dowling’s film is earnest in its attempt to extract specifically Christian life lessons from a familiar tale of manchildren forced into growing up, and goes pretty light on the Bible-bashing relative to others in its cinematic church. Still, it can’t help feeling like something of a zucchini-bread movie: more wholesome than it looks, in the manner of sweet treats devised by parents to smuggle vegetable content into their children, but ultimately less fun too.
Following a limited theatrical run via Fathom Entertainment, “Bad Counselors” may find its widest audience on VOD — with an extended afterlife, perhaps, in youth church groups not unlike the one depicted in the film. Crossover potential is limited, unless the recent Prime series “Every Year After” makes a sufficient star of leading man Matt Cornett that his fans get curious.
Cornett’s affable dudebro energy on screen goes some way toward balancing out the more obnoxious aspects of his character Grayson Fuller — a college-fraternity alpha jock introduced smoothly bluffing his way through a pantsless Zoom interview for a high-end finance internship. The interviewer is impressed, though he’d probably be less so if he saw Grayson callously hazing the frathouse’s beleaguered new pledge, or drunkenly heading out on the town with his best friend Tyler (Ramon Reed). The two of them party hard enough and often enough that local police officer Montgomery (Missi Pyle) knows them by name; when some particularly irresponsible carousing crosses a line, however, they’re slapped with a community service sentence.
