BAD COUNSELORS

Here is the decision. BAD COUNSELORS is a four-star comedy with a very strong Christian worldview, and those two things sit together far more comfortably than you might expect. It is goofy. The jokes land. The script pulls its threads together neatly, and the ending brings real hope rather than a tidy bow.
It also spends its first act in a fraternity. Grayson and Tyler drink heavily, get arrested, lie their way into a job they have no business holding, and behave badly along the way. None of it is celebrated — the movie is building a dark-to-light arc, and the dark has to be dark for the light to mean anything. But it is on screen, and that is why this one carries a caution rather than a clean bill.
The film also has fun at the expense of Christian stereotypes, caricaturing them for laughs before letting the real thing show through.
So: if your children are old enough to see foolishness named as foolishness, take them. If they are young enough to just think the party looks fun, wait a few years.

Grayson Fuller has just nailed a Zoom interview for a dream job at a New York law firm. He and his best friend Tyler celebrate the only way frat brothers know how — and wake up in a police station wearing party hats and leis, facing charges, expulsion, and 120 hours of community service in two weeks.
A flyer in Tyler's pocket offers a way out: Camp Burning Bush. Neither of them is remotely a Christian. Both are very good at pretending. What they find at camp is not what they came for.

Four stars, and here is what earns them. The comedy actually works — this is a genuinely funny, goofy movie, not a message film with a few jokes bolted on. The gags are well built, and more importantly the script is: what gets set up in the first act pays off, and the pieces come together neatly instead of collapsing into sermon.
Underneath the silliness there is real heart. The Christian characters start as caricatures — the over-eager counselor who works Scripture into everything, the church with the enormous AV show and the pastor who brags about his wife — and the film knows they are caricatures. It plays them for comedy and then lets something sincere come through. The ending is a feel-good one that brings hope, which is harder to land than it sounds.

BAD COUNSELORS believes God goes looking for people who are not looking for Him. That is its whole engine. Grayson and Tyler do not turn up at Camp Burning Bush because they are spiritually curious; they are running from expulsion. The movie's claim is that a faith journey to Jesus Christ may not look the way you expect — and it makes that claim through a drunken night, a flyer, and a lie.
What it exalts is what Scripture exalts: redemption, faith, prayer, forgiveness, charity, humility, generosity, family, unselfishness, faithfulness. The camp works on these two because relationship works on them — boys who need encouragement and understanding, counselors who will not perform for them, a romance that grows slowly and carefully.
It is also willing to be honest about Christians. The believers here are not uniformly good. One is consumed with jealousy and pushes a young woman past her stated limits while insisting he is only looking out for her. Another is overbearing and flirtatious with a man who is plainly uncomfortable. A pastor holds back the whole truth from two young men when telling it would have helped them. The film puts these failures on screen without excusing them, and that is a mark in its favor.
Its central move — that grace finds people mid-fall — is one the New Testament makes plainly: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

This is a comedy that earns its sincerity — funny first, heartfelt second, and never confused about the order. Older kids and teenagers will laugh, and parents will have plenty to talk about on the drive home. Just know the first act is loud, drunk and deliberately foolish before the light arrives. Our answer stands: worth the trip — older kids and up.