Guidance (2014)

• 60%
• 2014
• Comedy
• Pat Mills
• Pat Mills
• Zahra Bentham
• Kevin Hanchard

David Gold, a former child actor with a modicum of fame from that time, is now a thirty-something burnt out shell of a human being. An overgrown adolescent with a warped sense of reality and of his life (including not being sexually active, he probably a repressed homosexual, being gay which most people just assume about him upon meeting), he's broke, can't keep any job due largely to his excessive drinking, has long severed ties with his parents and has just done so with his older sister Ginny in her pleas for him to get professional help for his psychological issues, and is on the brink of being homeless unless he immediately comes up with back rent. On top of everything, he is in denial about a potentially life threatening medical diagnosis. To get rent money and as he feels his purpose in life is to help teenagers being one emotionally himself, he, "borrowing" the identity of a real life counselor he finds online, applies for an immediately need to be filled high school counselor job as bespectacled, corduroy suit-wearing "Roland Brown", and gets hired on a temporary basis spewing Brown's mantras he was able to memorize. As Brown mantra spewing in combination with David's inherent self results in both the faculty and students thinking he a bit weird, David instead turns to being his booze guzzling adolescent self in connecting with the students. In the process of making the first real human connections in a long time, David may come to some realizations about his life. His made up life as a guidance counselor takes a darker turn when he discovers some information about the home life of one of the students, Jabrielle Crain, whose problems cannot be fixed with a relaxing shot of vodka followed by being herself.