I went into Fired Up! second guessing the premise from the outset. How could a PG-13 raunchy teen sex comedy be any good? I forgot a PG-13 rating pretty much means the only two things not allowed are nudity and an overt number of uses of the F-word. Fired Up! takes advantage of all the PG-13 loop holes, avoids using even one f-bomb and on top of that actually delivers enough comedy to keep you entertained throughout. I’m as shocked by all of this as you may be, but Fired Up! actually makes for a decent comedic distraction.
The story centers on Shawn and Nick (Nicholas D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen), a pair of football jocks who don’t want to go to this year’s football camp and decide to ditch, join the cheerleading squad and spend three weeks surrounded by cheerleaders. Of course the overall goal is to sleep with as many of them as possible and in any film of this sort the original goal is soon trumped by the fact they find themselves actually enjoying the camaraderie of being on the cheer team as well as one of them soon falls in love with cheer team captain Carly, played by Disturbia co-star Sarah Roemer.
Fired Up! isn’t without all the typical clichés with the inevitable misunderstanding mucking up the works at the end before things get worked out and the guy eventually gets the girl, but the fact this film is rated PG-13 may have actually worked in its favor in its execution. Anonymous screenwriting team labeled as Freedom Jones had to be a bit more subtle with the sex jokes and the film played as if a lot of improvisational moments from the shoot were kept for the final cut.
As the leads D’Agosto and Olsen brought a satisfying balance of aloofness, immaturity, sincerity and understanding to their characters that no matter how silly and unbelievable the plot got they never took it too far and their characters even occasionally recognize the stupidity of it all. The film itself even manages to take it a step further underscoring the misunderstanding in the film by featuring the shamed boys on a bus ride home while Kate Nash’s “Dickhead” (listen here) plays in the background with lyrics such as “Why you being a dickhead for? / Stop being a dickhead.” That alone deserves a back pat.
I also found some entertainment value in the subtleties surrounding the cheer squad’s closet lesbian (Danneel Harris) who has a crush on Angela played by Hayley Marie Norman. I still wonder how many people in my audience actually caught her rubbing her face on Norman’s posterior after she fell during a cheer trick in practice, but by the end of the film you would have to be asleep to miss the handful of ass she is taking home with her. For as much as these films love to beat the audience over the head with their jokes, and Fired Up! is no exception, there are a few moments such as these that make this one just a skosh better.
With the good also comes the bad as sometimes-funny-sometimes-annoying John Michael Higgins plays the cheer camp instructor with enough gusto that the joke goes on so long it eventually forces a chuckle, but by the end you wish he would just go away. Also David Walton as Dr. Rick, Carly’s college-age boyfriend, is far more annoying than he is funny, and annoying to the point you would never even want to date a girl that was able to stand his presence for more than 5 minutes, let alone begin pursuing her as any man with an ounce of charisma outshines the douche that is Dr. Rick.
On a whole, the good outweighs the bad in Fired Up!, much to my surprise and satisfaction. You can never go into a film like this expecting too much because it will always manage to disappoint, but if you go into them expecting the same-old same-old they can surprise you every so often. This film is by no means a revelation, but I at least had a good time while I watched it, which is all you can really ask for from a film of this ilk.
