Huck Botko’s Bad Johnson is probably the most thoughtful movie possible about a penis that takes human form.
Blaming his genitals after yet another relationship is ruined by his inability to say no to the women who keep throwing themselves at him, hunky personal trainer Rich Johnson (Cam Gigandet) awakens one morning to find his crotch as smooth as a Ken doll’s, and that his penis has now taken on the form of a slovenly bro (Nick Thune) who remains determined to run, and destroy, Rich’s life. But it’s a life that goes on.
Unlike other recent movies that have posited emasculation as a fate worse than death — yeah, you, Dom Hemingway — Bad Johnson remains surprisingly mellow about the aftermath, becoming a not-terrible relationship comedy, devoting several weeks in narrative time to the newly penis-free Rich’s courtship of gym client Lindsay (Katherine Cunningham).
Meanwhile, his penis’s adventures in the world occasionally feel like an element the film doesn’t really need, though Bad Johnson‘s tones complement each other better than the similarly bifurcated Love and Air Sex, which was also half charming romantic comedy and half celebration of douchebags at their douchiest.
In fact, aside from its title and character names, Bad Johnson actually has fewer dick jokes than a lot of movies that aren’t about anthropomorphized dicks.