Starring: Nicholas D’Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sara Roemer, and Molly Sims
Run Time: 1hr 34 mins.
Plot Synopsis: Shawn Colfax and Nick Brady, the stars of the Gerald R. Ford High School football team, are dreading the prospect of another summer at football camp. When Nick hatches a scheme for the two to join their school’s cheerleaders at cheer camp instead, they find themselves awash in a sea of gorgeous young women. It all goes great until Shawn falls for Carly, the beautiful head cheerleader who sees right through them.
<This Review contains Mild Spoilers>
The last ten years or so have seen the entire comedy genre change. Gone are the witty, intelligent comedies. The comedies that have swooped in to replace those are what I will classify as the “raunch-fest comedies.” These films, which seem to make up an overwhelming majority of adult comedies, are filled with foul language and sexual innuendo. Perversion runs rampant in the new comedies; sick and disgusting and foul. I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy comedies like that, because I do. I guess maybe it’s just my generation, what we were raised to laugh at, or maybe it’s just the progression of the world and popular culture. Maybe it takes progressively more and more shocking situations to make my generation laugh. I don’t know. But we sure have seen these comedies make a meteoric rise to the top of the genre, with films like American Pie, Freddy Got Fingered, Jay and Silent Bob Strike back, Sex Drive, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Superbad, and Zack and Miri make a porno all achieving some level of success and being widely accepted as the new form of comedy.
Thus the world is ready for a film like Fired Up! to be made. Without the major change in the genre, this movie would not exist. Yes, it is a degenerate and perverted comedy filled with more innuendo than you could possibly imagine. In fact, the sexual innuendo’s in this film provide the bulk of the laughs, and there are actually some rather creative ones. At least, in that respect, Fired Up! is being original. It is true that you will be able to guess the plot of this film and you will be able to correctly predict where it will end up within the first 20 minutes. But that is not the draw of this film. You don’t go to see a “raunch-fest” comedy for the plot. You go for the shock value, the innuendo, the perversion. And this film does not disappoint. This is like a PG-13 American Pie with cheerleaders.
The jokes are mainly delivered verbally. There is a little bit of awkward physical comedy, but the overwhelming majority of my laughs came from the delivery. This is a PG-13 comedy, so there is not an overwhelming amount of profanity, but that is only a technicality. The swears are simply replaced by less offensive words, but the intent is still quite clear. It’s great, the comedy is very tongue in cheek and sarcastic at times. I love that style of humor, so that is probably the saving grace in an otherwise predictable comedy. There are some jokes that, at times, feel like bad pick up lines. Very cheesy, but in a good way.
The main characters are somewhat predictable, as is to be expected. All of the lead characters are typical, “raunch-fest” cliche characters. But this actually is not that big an issue with the film, as you expect them to crack a certain type of joke, the aforementioned creativity in the innuendo keeps the expected jokes feeling fresh and interesting. The acting is exactly what you would expect. Not great, but not shockingly poor. It’s not that hard to play a high school cheerleader. Just cast a hot chick (and there are plenty) with lots of energy and put her in a short skirt, and you have a high school cheerleader. Plus, the genre has been done so many times before that the blueprints have been well established for how these characters should be portrayed, so it’s actually harder to screw up the characters than it is to pull them off. I was pleasantly surprised with the acting of Sara Roemer, who played the head cheerleader/love interest for the main male character Shawn. She was refreshing in an otherwise stale and blaze cast. Like I said, not bad enough to be disgusted, but not good enough to rave about. Roemer was clearly the high point.
There are no life lessons to be learned in Fired Up! No redeeming moral value. The acting is average and the plot is very predictable. And while you will see most of the jokes coming a mile away, most of them are delivered in such a manner that they don’t feel as bad as you think they will. There is actually a bit of wit in this “raunch-fest,” an aspect that you don’t typically find in the new genre. But the few highlights are not enough to make this movie good. It’s not pure garbage, I’ve paid for worse movies. But I’ve also seen a lot better ones. However, this is to be expected in February. It isn’t exactly a great month for new releases, so in a month that leaves you with very little choices, I’ll have to recommend this if you feel the need to see a movie in a theater RIGHT NOW. But if you can wait, make due with Netflix or however else you rent your films, I’d recommend that. There is some redeeming value to Fired Up! Mostly in the creative new innuendo’s and the cheerleaders. They were nice… I wouldn’t recommend you make a trip out to the theater to see this, but if you’re already there and you’ve got nothing else to do, at least you will find a few things to keep you “entertained.”