Pat Mills in Guidance (Strand Releasing)

Guidance, a new comedy about a depressed ex-child actor posing as a high school guidance counselor, is the directorial debut for Pat Mills, and at times it shows.

The film chronicles a down-and-out former star David Gold, played by Mills. At the start, Gold is summarily fired from a voice acting gig for sounding “too gay,” and soon he’s diagnosed with skin cancer. Alone, depressed, and short on cash, he decides to impersonate a counselor to get a job.

This movie frustrates because it feels so promising. The premise isn’t quite original—there are a number of movies about troubled adults who help troubled teens in inappropriate but ultimately heartwarming ways, School of Rock being one. But Mills’s campy, oddball, deadpan humor makes this film distinct and worth watching. I just wish the execution had been better.

Guidance just misses its mark. The 80-minute comedy is full of scenes that drag on for just a few seconds too long, causing lines of dialogue to fall flat. Some moments that are meant to be awkward—such as when Gold pours vodka shots for a shy student, Rhonda (Eleanor Zichy), to loosen her up—merely come across as creepy. At times though, the film clicks. Gold’s personal affirmation voice-over is a delight, with over-the-top sayings like, “If I don’t fit into an imperfect world, I am better than the world I live in.” This gets more ridiculous as the character slips further into depression.

One misguided thread is almost moving but panders to clichés. A student, Jabrielle (Zahra Bentham), wears a single Band-Aid on her cheek. One might guess that she’s doing a poor job of hiding an acne outbreak, but instead it turns out that her mother is abusive. Gold figures this out by calling her house. Jabrielle’s mother, cartoonishly evil, begins yelling at David as soon as he calls, threatening to punish her daughter. It doesn’t help that Jabrielle is the film’s only black student.

On the other hand, Mills succeeds as an actor. He is electric as Gold, bonding with his students in his booze and marijuana-fueled sessions and falling deeper into depravity as the film goes on. However, I can’t help but feel that actor/writer/director Mills could have been better served by bringing an outside voice into the film, which has a major case of tunnel vision. Perhaps a leading hand could have helped him see which jokes translated to the screen and which ones were only funny in his own head. Dare I say, this film could have used some guidance.