Bad Counselors Might Be the Christian Comedy We’ve Been Waiting For (Early Movie Review)

Release Date: July 22, 2026
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hr 35 min
Directed by: Chris Dowling
Written by: Taylor Grabowsky, Ryan Gunnarson, Dexter Masland

Love Thy Nerd was provided an early screener of this film for the purposes of writing this review.

For the first ten or fifteen minutes of “Bad Counselors,” I genuinely forgot I was watching a faith-based film.

We open on college shenanigans. A fraternity on probation. Alcohol-fueled parties. Pledge hazing. Two guys stumbling into a building they think is a nightclub, only to realize (a beat too late) that they’ve wandered into a church service. It plays like a throwback to the 90s teen comedies I grew up on.

And then it gets churchy. Gloriously, accurately churchy.

“Bad Counselors” doesn’t shy away from poking fun at church culture, and it does it with a level of specificity that only comes from people who’ve actually sat in the pews. Churches with ridiculous one-word names. A coffee shop tucked into the lobby. A pastor who can’t stop mentioning his hot wife. If you’ve spent any real time in American evangelical spaces, you’ll recognize every single joke, and you’ll probably wince a little because it’s too accurate.

But that’s not where the movie lands. The church-culture ribbing is the setup, not the punchline. This isn’t a movie mocking Christians from the outside. It’s a movie that clearly loves the church enough to laugh at it from the inside, and then take it seriously anyway.

“Bad Counselors” follows Grayson (Matt Cornett) and Tyler (Ramon Reed), two fraternity brothers facing expulsion after a wild night ends in handcuffs and a court-ordered stack of community service hours. Their solution: pose as counselors at a Christian youth camp, fake their way through Bible knowledge neither of them actually has, and get out clean in a week.

It’s a classic fish-out-of-water premise, and director Chris Dowling (whose previous credit, “Where Hope Grows,” should tell you he knows exactly how to land an emotional beat without getting saccharine) leans into it with real comedic confidence. The camp setting isn’t new territory for faith-based films. “A Week Away” already proved that a church camp is fertile ground for this kind of story. But “Bad Counselors” uses the setting better than most, mining it for both the comedy and the heart.

The cast is stacked with familiar faces if you’ve spent any time in the CW or Disney Channel corners of the internet. Matt Cornett (“High School Musical: The Musical: The Series”) and Brec Bassinger (“Stargirl”) anchor the leads, with Ramon Reed (“Just Roll With It”) bringing a lot of the comedic energy. Chris Klein, Missi Pyle, and Richard T. Jones round things out with the kind of supporting-cast presence that elevates every scene they’re in.

This movie made me laugh out loud. Multiple times. Genuinely, involuntarily, out loud. I say that not to damn other Christian comedies with faint praise, but because it’s rare enough that it’s worth naming directly. The Christian-movie cheese level here is low, and what cheese does exist feels intentional, a wink at the audience rather than an accident of budget or earnestness.

“Bad Counselors” is rated PG-13, and honestly, I’m glad. Not because I think every faith-based movie needs an edgier rating, but because there’s real value in telling a story set in a more mature environment every once in a while. The rating here doesn’t come from language or lewd content. It comes from the mature elements baked into the setup at the start of the film, the same fraternity-culture chaos that gets these guys sentenced to camp in the first place. It’s used to tell a real story, not for shock value.

And as someone who runs in nerd-culture-meets-church circles for a living, I have to shout out one moment in particular: a “you’re a nerd” beat that plays as a genuine step toward someone embracing their identity, right before it becomes a step toward faith. It’s a small moment. It might not even register for most viewers. For me, it was icing on the cake.

There’s so much I want to spoil here. The turns this story takes, the way it earns its emotional moments, the specific gags that had me laughing. But you should experience it fresh, so I’ll just say this: “Bad Counselors” cracked a formula that a lot of Christian movies have been chasing for years, telling a story that’s genuinely funny and genuinely faithful without sacrificing either one for the other.

If this is the direction Christian comedies are headed, sign me up.

“Bad Counselors” opens in limited theaters July 22 through July 27. You’ll need to be quick to snag a ticket before it’s gone. Find a theater near you at badcounselors.com/tickets. It will also stream on Angel Studios sometime in the near future.