‘Bad Counselors’ director pushes faith films beyond the ‘cheesy’ label

Filmmaker Chris Dowling has spent more than a decade making faith- and family-based films, and he agrees with much of the criticism aimed at the genre: too many are cheesy, cringeworthy and just not edgy enough.

“We’ve earned that title.”

To be fair, Dowling’s résumé includes several films that have broken through the genre’s stereotypes, earning widespread acclaim and attracting mainstream audiences, including Blue Miracle, Run the Race and Where Hope Grows. Even so, he believes faith-based movies can go further.

A film can deliver a faith-centered message without going over the edge, he says, while appealing to audiences both inside and outside the church.

He believes his latest film, Bad Counselors (PG-13), does just that. It follows two fraternity brothers who land in legal trouble and agree to complete their community service as counselors at a Christian youth camp – even though they aren’t churchgoers themselves. Dowling directed it.

Bad Counselors is in theaters July 22-27.

Too often, Dowling said, Christians champion a film simply because they agree with its message.

“If you look at the buffet of stuff that’s out there that is considered faith-based,” he told Heartlander News, “a lot of it is cringey and cheesy, and we prop it up because we go, ‘Hey, we agree with the message.’ So we’re going to prop that up and say it’s awesome when, in fact, you can agree with the message and like the message, but it doesn’t mean you go to your friend and say, ‘This is an amazing film.’”

Bad Counselors is rated PG-13 for scenes of drinking but is free from sexuality and profanity. The target audience is teens and adults. It arrives at a time when live-action comedies are increasingly rare in the faith and family genre.

Too often, Dowling said, comedies in the faith space don’t get made because of the prevailing belief that “we don’t want to offend, or we can’t even be slightly edgy, and we’ve got to fit in the smallest little box humanly possible.”

Dowling said his goal is “to find the edge – but you can’t go over the edge.”

“Life is full of rough edges, and that’s where I think the comedy is,” he said.

For Bad Counselors, “we got to play on some of the edges of that with this one, which is why I think it has a broad appeal.”

The film stars Matt Cornett, Missi Pyle, Richard T. Jones, Chris Klein, Brec Bassinger, Pierson Fode and Nathan Gamble.

It explores themes of redemption, second chances and identity. Dowling and the team behind the film have screened it for both Christian and secular college students and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. He credited the cast and crew for helping make the vision a reality.

“We made a film that reaches beyond the church crowd,” he added, “and it’s tough to do.”