By snoadmin
Our Take: “Fired Up” is a predictable and overindulgent teen comedy that provides few laughs. You won’t be missing much by missing this one.
Summary: Two high school football players join a cheer camp to get up close to hot girls and learn new skills.
A poor excuse to see girls in sports bras while two dudes relentlessly high five each other, “Fired Up” is anything but a new idea. Guy number one encourages guy number two to do something ridiculous and deceptive in hopes of scoring an unforeseeable amount of hot babes. Guy number two grows a conscious, falls in love with the smart hot girl, while guy number two cracks jokes about butts and boobs. No revolution in media here.
“Fired Up” starts its way with Shawn Colfax (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Nick Brady (Eric Christian Olsen), dreading the summer they will have to spend at a sweaty girl-less football camp. Brilliance strikes the two guys when they realize that girls are at cheer camps, and therefore they should be at a cheer camp. Through a series of lies involving dying parents, cartwheels and over-the-top flattery the two men arrive at camp in a bevy of pre-sorority cheerleaders.
Through a mess of homosexual jokes and choppy dialogue “Fired Up” has few entertaining moments. The entire cheer camp watches “Bring It On” under starlight and mouths the words to the raw-raw dialogue. It is unclear whether this scene is meant to parody cheerleading or celebrate it, but it nonetheless provoked a few chuckles from the audience.
The entire cast of “Fired Up” seems to desperately want the jokes to be funnier than they are, as they overact and overindulge in the dim-witted dialogue.
Olsen’s Nick frantically attempts to channel Vince Vaughn’s character in “Wedding Crashers” but ends up doing a bad impression of Jim Carey. Olsen’s talent does not lie within comedy.
The often-hilarious John Michael Higgins seems to be going through the motions as the possibly homosexual head coach Keith. Molly Sims plays Coach Keith’s wife Diora, who fits blandly as the slightly older forbidden love of Nick. D’Angosto’s Shawn, and Sarah Roemer’s Carly are both predictable and plain, making them a perfect pair.
The audience is meant to believe that Shawn falls for Carly because she is the exception of being one of the few girls with a brain. Carly quotes John Lennon and gives an excessive amount suspicious squints at Shawn and Nick’s schemes. Most of the other females in the film appear to be perfectly content with being used and gawked at. “Fired Up” supposes that most women are easily deceived by a cheesy smile and flattering charm.
Shawn and Nick tire of swindling cheer-ladies and the two men magically begin to find some value in team spirit and friendship. There is an attempt at a moral, heartfelt message in “Fired Up” but it gets lost in between all the skinny-dipping and clique battles. The idea of two guys in a cheer camp could have been quite entertaining. Perhaps if Shawn and Nick were originally going to computer camp and were more uncomfortable and clumsy, “Fired Up” could have had some spark of originality. But in Hollywood it seems best not to take a chance.
“You gotta risk it to get the biscuit” is an embarrassing line that is repeated throughout “Fired Up.” Nick and Shawn repeat the phrase in hopes of encouraging others to take a chance and do something different, if only “Fired Up” had followed their advice.
