Fired Up Review

Posted by Joseph Lee on 02.22.2009

There's actually a lot to cheer for in this movie.



Starring:
Sarah Roemer as Carly
Nicholas D'Agosto as Shawn Colfax
Eric Christian Olsen as Nick Brady
David Walton as Dr. Rick
Molly Sims as Diora
Philip Baker Hall as Coach Byrnes

Story: Two high school football players go to cheerleading camp in order to get girls.

A movie like Fired Up doesn't come along very often. There are good comedies and then there are stupid comedies. The really stupid ones like Disaster Movie or The Love Guru usually don't have anything going for them and never end up being quite good. But when a movie knows that it's stupid, and doesn't try to be anything but, it can sometimes be pretty funny. This is the case with Fired Up. I wasn't expecting much. The advertisements on television had me chuckling a few times, but I knew it could have been really bad. Luckily, it was the opposite.

Do I have complaints with this movie? Sure. First of all, it's entirely predictable and cliche. If you've seen Wedding Crashers, then you've seen this in terms of story structure and plot. It felt like the less-raunchy, PG-13 cousin of that film. Even the two leads, played by Eric Christian Olsen and Nicholas D'Agosto, have a chemistry and friendship in the film similar to the characters played by Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers. There are also several key moments in Fired Up that almost mirror those in the previously mentioned R-rated comedy.

So it's nothing new in terms of story. Like many entries in the teen sex comedy field, it's been done before and that makes it predictable. You'll probably be able to figure out each major plot point before it happens. Unlike other films in the genre, it doesn't seem to want to go as raunchy as it could have been. With an R-rating, it would have opened up the field for an entirely different film. But Fired Up plays it safe with it's PG-13 rating. Without crass humor, it instead goes for stupid jokes and physical comedy.

Let's not kid ourselves here, this movie is completely brainless. Not a single character could be classified as "intelligent", and most of the jokes are moronic. But that's what makes this movie work. It seems to grasp early on that it's a dumb comedy and it goes out all with that type of humor. There are gay jokes, sexist jokes and PG-13 sex jokes. But there are also some really stupid one-liners that will sneak up on you and make you laugh. It certainly caught me off-guard to see that I was laughing a lot more than I thought I would. It's the type of movie intended to be entertaining but forgettable. It does exactly what's it's supposed to.

I also enjoyed the cast. While none of the characters are smart, and there is little to no development, the cast is very likable and that makes it work. Olsen and D'Agosto have a chemistry that works and while they don't feel like high school students (Olsen is 31 and D'Agosto is 28), they do feel like they could be friends. The cheerleaders are all walking cliches, but it's fun. John Michael Higgins is also there with a decent comedic turn as a male cheerleading coach. Overall, it works and makes a dumb comedy more fun than it has any right to be.

The 411: Fired Up is nothing new in the teen sex comedy genre. The best thing about that is that it's completely aware of this fact. It's cliche, predictable and incredibly stupid. However, it's also fairly entertaining and funny. If you turn your brain off and ignore the fact there are a lot of better comedies in the same genre, you'll be entertained.

Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]