Bad Counselors is a Christian comedy about redemption featuring two heavy-drinking fraternity bros who pretend to be Christian camp counselors to avoid a bad situation. There’s plenty of Christian-centric humor here (including some fun digs at cringy evangelical culture), but some of the college-aged content may raise an eyebrow for parents with younger children.
Say what you will about Grayson: He knows how to put on a façade.
That’s how the frat bro aced the job interview with a prestigious law firm while finishing his final year of college. He knew just what to say during the online interview. He wore the perfect, in-frame suit jacket (never mind the pants). When asked a tough question, he knew just how to make his off-screen staring look like thoughtful musing rather than reading Wikipedia.
Yep, things are looking up for Grayson. And, speaking of looking up, he might as well go out and throw back a few shots to celebrate, right?
The next time he looks up, he’s in a police station, sitting next to fellow frat bro Tyler. Tyler’s shirt is missing. They’re hungover. And a police officer shows them over a dozen videos they don’t remember posting to social media.
Videos of them inebriated, damaging an important campus statue.
Police charges are coming. Expulsion is all-but certain. And should they be expelled, Grayson knows his future with that law firm is over.
But remember, Grayson wants to be a lawyer, and he knows his way around a plea bargain. And in this case, he suggests a good one: community service in exchange for remaining students at the university.
The officer considers this and offers her judgment: if Grayson and Tyler can complete 120 hours of community service in two weeks’ time, then the city will drop the charges, and the college will allow the students to stay and graduate.
It’s a relief to the two, until they begin to wonder where they’ll possibly be able to obtain that many hours in so short a time.
That’s when Tyler recalls the local church seeking male camp counselors for their five-day Christian camp. The problem is that neither of the frat bros are Christian—and if they want to get the jobs and blend in, they’ll have to learn how to speak “Christianese.”
But hey, Grayson’s great at façades. How hard could it be?
Grayson and Tyler hope to do their community service and be done with it all. They’re certainly not looking to have their outlooks altered or their lives changed. But eventually, conviction comes for Tyler.
After sitting in on a camp sermon, Tyler begins to question their actions. He tells Grayson they should come clean and admit their mistakes. But Grayson—terrified of expulsion and losing his future job from it—tells his friend to keep quiet. It’s clear Tyler struggles in his guilt for the rest of the movie, however, and he’d admit his fault were he not afraid to ruin Grayson’s future, alongside his own. (And though it takes time, Grayson eventually repents, too.)
Even in their unreformed state, Grayson and Tyler still do some good around camp. Each is assigned to buddy with their own respective camper, and both of these campers hold deep insecurities. However, Grayson and Tyler both help the two enjoy camp and feel better about themselves.
[Spoiler Warning] When people discover the truth about Grayson and Tyler, they forgive the men when the two offer a very genuine apology. Camp leader Tom tells the men that he’s known they weren’t Christians from the moment they sat down for their interview, but he wanted to give them a chance. He did so because Grayson and Tyler remind Tom of how he used to behave at their age, and someone else gave him a chance, too.
The movie is filled with plenty of small Christian cultural references that would take pages to mention, so we’ll try to summarize it through the bigger references.
As the prospective counselors decide which church to attend in order to learn Christian culture, they reject churches with names that sound too formal. “It’s gotta be one of those with a ridiculous one-word name,” Grayson says. They settle on a church called “Lighthouse.”
Lighthouse Church functions as a non-denominational megachurch, filled with intense video intros and smoke machines and led by “Pastor Zion.” We hear a variety of Christian quips from Pastor Zion in a montage of his sermon, such as “I don’t watch the news, I read the news—the Good News;” “I have a heart for Africa;” and simply “Tim Tebow.” Later, Zion asks the congregation to close their eyes and raise their hands if they feel the Holy Spirit calling on them. No one does, but Zion lies that plenty of hands are raised.
Later, while attending another church, a man says they need more people for a mission trip to Cancun—a potential joke about churches that go to fancy vacation spots for “missions.”
With little real understanding gained from their experience at Lighthouse, Grayson and Tyler head into the camp counselor interview with dodgy knowledge. They attempt to prove their credentials by showing the camp’s pastor and leader, Pastor Tom, a video of them pretending to perform a miracle as their friend rises out of a wheelchair and walks.
Still, they make the cut, and Tom invites Tyler to pray in front of the campers. He crosses himself and attempts to recite the Lord’s Prayer—with little success. “Our Father, who does art in Heaven. Hello, be your name!”
Later, Tom tells the camp of Jesus calming the storm (Luke 8:22-25), using the story to explain that God allows us to face difficult trials. “The Bible, it doesn’t promise us no more storms,” he says. “The Bible promises us that we have a Savior so that when those storms do come, He will bring us peace.”
Female camp counselor Jenna bonds with Grayson, telling him that she struggles to discern how much of her faith is her own versus her father’s, since her dad is Pastor Tom. They both discuss how upbringing influences what we think and believe.
The camp puts on the band Lifehouse’s famous “Everything” skit.
Pastor Zion talks about how “hot” his wife is. Tom informs Grayson and Tyler that “every man that walks into a brothel is searching for God.” (For context, his overarching point is that we try to find the soul’s true desire in all the wrong places and things.) Later, Tyler tries to use the metaphor in front of the whole camp, and when a kid asks what a brothel is, Grayson quickly diverts the conversation.
Another male counselor, Dallas, has feelings for Jenna. He’s asked her out a few times now, lamenting that she’s not looking to date. He says that Jenna is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” continuing the biblical references by saying she’s “a land flowing with milk and honey, am I right?” When he sees Grayson and Jenna are developing feelings for each other, he advises Grayson that “you can’t stop a girl from falling, but you can keep her from stumbling.”
A female camp counselor, Becky, instantly falls for Tyler, casually flirting with him throughout the movie, much to his dismay. Becky claims that, while engaged in something called a “listening prayer,” God told her that Tyler was her future husband.
A frat bro calls Grayson, asking how the “chicks at church camp” are. When Tyler and Grayson return, that same frat bro asks whether they brought “any hotties from Jesus camp.” And when the two friends hug, another frat bro yells out, “hey lovebirds! You want to get a room, or you want to get on the bus?”
Tyler and Becky kiss. Grayson accidentally embraces Jenna during a game of Capture the Flag. Later, they nearly kiss but are interrupted. We see a man in boxers. Tyler ends up shirtless following his drunken escapades. Someone references “Garden of Eden costumes.”
Grayson and Tyler accidentally start a fire, though no one is hurt. A camper plays a zombie shooter video game.
The worst we hear is “idiot.”
Grayson and Tyler go downtown to drink, and they wake up hungover in a police station with no memory of their inebriated actions. People take shots of liquor. Grayson and Tyler video themselves kegging. People play beer pong.
Someone mentions “whiskey Wednesday,” a “night we won’t remember.” Grayson motivates frat brothers by saying, “when life gives you lemons, you make a bourbon sour.” The frat house is covered in alcohol-related memorabilia, such as crushed beer cans, a sign that reads “Bad day to be a beer can,” a “Tequila Blvd.” street sign and an Uncle Sam poster reading “I want you to beer me.”
Grayson commissions an underaged fraternity pledge to locate a bottle of single malt whisky to send as a gift to a law firm. When the pledge mentions being underaged, Grayson tells him to figure it out.
While interviewing for the job at the children’s camp, Tyler says “I love kids a lot—not in a weird way.”
A movie about a Christian camp? Been there, done that. A movie about a skeptic attending a Christian camp? Yeah, that’s been done, too.
But a movie about a Christian camp where the main character is an atheist posing as a camp counselor to earn community service hours to pay off his public intoxication charges?
Uh, yeah, that’s a new one.
Bad Counselors hits plenty of the same beats as other Christian summer camp movies. It’s got some jokes that land (even ones that poke fun at evangelical church culture). And like many Christian summer camp movies, actual references to Christianity are more often used as quips than teaching moments—so don’t expect anything deep here.
Now, because Christian camp movies don’t often have too much content, we should note that our main characters here make drinking alcohol their entire personality—at least for the start of the movie. And a couple of flirtatious comments may raise an eyebrow if you’re looking for a content-free watch with the little ones. (Of course, the PG-13 rating should be an indication of all that.)
Still, the movie showcases a nice message about repentance and second chances that’ll resonate with some viewers, and it packages it in a movie with some real laughs.
And you won’t even have to bring the bug spray to hear it!
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He’s also an avid cook. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
