Fired Up

bout halfway through Fired Up, the totally inept cheerleading comedy directed by Will Gluck, the characters in the film sit down for a screening of Bring It On!. They know all the words and repeat them in a reverent whisper as they worship at the altar of arguably the best teen cheerleading comedy. As the camera pans back and forth between Bring It On! and the Fired Up crowd, sitting in a darkened theater surrounded by actual high school cheerleaders it was impossible for me not to wish for the ability to stop the camera from ever returning to Fired Up.

Oh, the wicked sense of humor first time feature film director Gluck and screenwriter Freedom Jones have! Surely they laughed manically after putting together the film knowing full well how painful it was going to be for the audience to be teased with that glimpse of a much, much better film of the genre and then slammed back into the madness and mess that is Fired Up.

I actually was under the mistaken belief going into the screening of Fired Up that this film with the flimsiest of plots (think Wedding Crashers but without the laughs) was about college students. I must have just tuned out the part of the trailers that stressed this was a movie about high schoolers. Maybe it was the fact the lead actors, Eric Christian Olsen and Nicholas D'Agosto, are way out of their teen years that threw me off. Olsen is 31. D'Agosto is 28, but could maybe pass for a high school senior in a pinch if there weren't any teen actors out there capable of tackling a starring role in Fired Up. But, based on what I saw onscreen, anyone who'd ever graced the stage in a high school production could have handled his part. It wouldn't have mattered. The dialogue and direction sabotaged any chance any actor would have had in making this movie work.

The Story

Olsen and D'Agosto play Nick and Shawn, two horndog football players who decide to pass on football training camp in the hot desert and attend cheerleading camp instead. There will be hotties galore, plenty of opportunities to score, and they won't have to put up with a football coach who says sh*t so often that he's a walking drinking game.

So they make it to cheerleader camp after convincing their school's squad that by golly they DO like handsprings and splits and basket tosses more than tossing around the pigskin and getting hammered by big guys in shoulder pads. The only one not really buying into their act is Carly (Sarah Roemer, Disturbia). Carly's the head cheerleader and even though her squad sucks – they always finish dead last in competition – she's leery about Nick and Shawn's motives.

Because Fired Up does nothing to break out of its totally generic plot bubble, Shawn falls for Carly who, despite being the smartest girl at the cheerleading camp, has a douchebag for a boyfriend. 'Dr. Rick' as he calls himself because he's in med school (yes, that's the level of jokes in Fired Up) is blatantly obnoxious and using Carly (even a toddler could figure that out), but she is blind to his faults. Meanwhile, Nick's hot for teacher. And then it all wraps up with people learning lessons and everyone competing in the big cheerleading competition, which, by the way, is horribly shot so even that aspect of the film is totally unsatisfying.

The Cast

Olsen and D'Agosto can't rise above the script, although they do at least seem to have tried their best to bring this turkey to life. Both have great comedic timing and as a buddy team, they would do well in a film that actually allowed them to be real people rather than just caricatures of teen movie types. Roemer's fine though she doesn't have much to do. John Michael Higgins' funny performance as the head of the cheerleading camp is just wasted in this mess. And Molly Sims, as Higgins' wife and the teacher who Nick sets his sights on, is not given anything to do other than look pretty. No one else in the cast makes enough of an impression to deserve a mention.

The Bottom Line

This film's full of quips and lines obviously written down and recited on cue. There's not a natural bit of dialogue in Fired Up. It's also loaded with pretty young girls with perfect bodies who apparently sleep with any member of the opposite sex who hands them a line. Fired Up is definitely not about female empowerment. And as if making all the female characters look like easy bimbos wasn't bad enough, Fired Up shows us that these cheerleaders have no self-esteem, no winning attitude, and are totally lost without two football players moving in on their turf and turning their lives around.

And I just have to get back to this age issue one more time because it bothered me while I was suffering through the screening. At least twice Olsen makes cracks about Molly Sims' age. In reality, they are just a couple of years apart. Making it worse, Olsen and Sims look the same age onscreen. It's just bizarre to me that after hiring Olsen for the role, the age jokes weren't just cut out of the script.

Because it's 'cute', the cheerleaders repeatedly chant FU and that's supposed to be funny. It's also supposed to be funny that all male cheerleaders - except the two football players masquerading as cheerleaders - are gay. And a coach who cusses (but doesn't use the f-word – this is only a PG-13 film) is also the height of hilarity. Are we really this hard up for comedy that Fired Up's tired jokes make us laugh? Please let the answer be no. Avoid Fired Up and rent Bring It On!. You'll save yourself a headache.

GRADE: D

Fired Up was directed by Will Gluck and is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, partial nudity, language and some teen partying.

Source : http://movies.about.com