Movie Review - Fired Up!

Fired Up! * ½
Directed By: Will Gluck.
Written By: Freedom Jones.
Starring: Nicholas D'Agosto (Shawn Colfax), Eric Christian Olsen (Nick Brady), Sarah Roemer (Carly), Molly Sims (Diora), Danneel Harris (Bianca), David Walton (Dr. Rick), Adhir Kalyan (Brewster), AnnaLynne McCord (Gwyneth), Juliette Goglia (Poppy), Amber Stevens (Sara), Philip Baker Hall (Coach Byrnes), John Michael Higgins (Coach Keith), Edie McClurg (Ms. Klingerhoff).

It would be easy to be offended by a film like Fired Up! After all, it is a movie that essentially about two guys who use girls for their own personal sexual amusement, and then toss them aside as soon as they are done with them. Not only is this something the movie does not look down on, we are supposed to cheer our “heroes” as over the course of the movie, they learn a valuable lesson. Or at least one does.

But that would be giving the movie more thought than anyone who had anything to do with making it did. This is a movie that cynically tries to cram together other successful movies to make something that teenagers will flock to in droves (I’m sure in the pitch meetings they described it as American Pie meets Bring It On meets The Wedding Crashers). It didn’t seem to work, proving that teenagers have at least some taste.

The movies stars Nicholas D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen as two high school students (although D’Agosto is 29 and Olsen is 32!) who are the stars of the high school football team. Instead of going to hot, sweaty football camp for two weeks in the summer, surrounded by nothing but guys, they strike upon a genius idea – they’ll join the cheerleading squad, and spend two weeks sleeping with everything wearing pom poms. Their plan works, but there are complications – D’Agosto ends up falling for his squad’s captain, Carly (Sarah Roemer) and both end up actually caring about cheering.

It must be said that D’Agosto and Olsen are somewhat charming actors, and so they make the movie less painful that it could be. And really, I can’t complain about watching a 90 minutes of a bunch of pretty girls running around in cheerleading outfits (trust me, this doesn’t make me a pervert lusting after teenage girls – most of the cheerleaders appear to be in their mid – 20s). But one thing the movie is missing one key element – it’s not funny. Not ever. The movie just sits there on the screen. Sure, I probably smiled a couple of times, but never really laughed. Humor can make even the most offensive film funny (remember Borat? Or anything by Mel Brooks?). But when an offensive comedy isn’t funny, it’s just offensive. And there’s nothing funny about that.