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DVD review: Fired Up!
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Fired Up is not a funny movie. There is nothing to separate it from direct-to-DVD drivel like the now defunct American Pie and National Lampoon series. Bad misogynistic jokes? Check. Overused stereotypes? Check. Adherence to the 90's teen rom-com formula for the IQ impaired? Check.
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The plot follows two high school boys, Nick and Shawn. They're star football players and notorious chasers of tail. Shawn has slept with so many girls, in fact, that he has trouble remembering their names. Ah, classic. After being told by their coach (whose comedic draw is the number of times he says "sh*t" in a sentence) that their football camp will take place in Texas, where apparently no women exist (?), and overhearing the cheerleaders talk up their super sexy fun cheerleading camp, they decide to weasel their way in to the latter. This is where there could have been some laughs. Nick's younger sister, Poppy, is on the JV squad and has the poise and vocabulary of a 40 year old woman. Sadly, this overly-mature tween thing has been done before (Accepted), and fails to deliver.
Everyone in this movie is a sterotype. The cheerleading camp instructor is a guy that should be gay, but is married to the smoking hot co-counselor. Again, opportunity for comedy that is wasted and redundant, at best. Nick and Shawn use a plethora of euphemisms for sex and their penises, most of which fall flat. It could be the over the top delivery, or the lack of imagination. It's hard to decipher. The main cheerleaders are no exception to the overplayed stereoptypes: The head cheerleader, Carly, is the level-headed and down to earth one. There's the quirky brunette who always has something off-beat to say, followed by the catch-phrase, "I'm just sayin'". Then there's the obvious lesbian, always groping on one of her teammates, and this too is simply not funny. Nick and Shawn have to bunk with other guys, one of which is flamboyantly gay. The actor playing this character is trying too hard, and plays it over the top. Again, not funny.
Naturally, Nick, the nicer of the two boneheads, falls for Carly, but she has an unfaithful older boyfriend for him to contest with named Rick. Rick is in college, only listens to late 90's music, and has taken a page out of the Dane Cook handbook for sub-par actors. Surprisingly, Rick is the source of a couple of real laughs in this waste of film.
The actors seem as if they're unsure of what to do with the lines they've been given. Lacking any real sense of comedic timing, they choose instead to play it big and loud, hoping for the best. Eric Christian Olsen, as Shawn, is too old to play high school at the ripe age of 32. You may remember him as Lloyd in Dumb and Dumberer, the atrocious prequel to Dumb and Dumber. Get it? Yeah, it wasn't that funny then, either.
Fired Up is a regurgitation of better films (or, at least, more successful ones) such as Wedding Crashers and Bring it On. The writers seem to be aware of this fact, too, since some of their scenes seem almost plagiarized from those films. In one notable scene, all the cheerleaders at cheer camp are watching Bring it On, and they've memorized every line, speaking it along with the characters.
With the plot and cast, this movie had potential, but squanders it all in favor of misogyny, penis references, and a lack of any real comedy to speak of.
Fired Up! (2009)
Rated: Unrated
Genre: Comedy
Formats: DVD, Blu-ray
Running time: 90 minutes
Starring: Eric Christian Olsen, Nicholas D'Agosto, Sarah Roemer, Molly Sims, AnnaLynne McCord, John Michael Higgins
Written by: Freedom Jones
Directed by: Will Gluck
You can rent this at Netflix, or buy it Amazon.
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