fired up movie review

2-4-6-8! Who do we eviscerate? Fired Up! Fired Up! Yaaaaaaaay!

Nicholas D'Agosto and Sarah Roemer lead the cheering in "Fired Up."

After the screening of “Fired Up!,” one of my colleagues grimly observed that “ Dead Man ” was a better cheerleader movie. That was, you will recall, the 1995 Western starring Johnny Depp , Robert Mitchum , Billy Bob Thornton and Iggy Pop . I would give almost anything to see them on a cheerleader squad. Here is a movie that will do for cheerleading what “ Friday the 13th ” did for summer camp.

The story involves two callow and witless high school football players, Shawn and Nick, who don’t want to attend summer football training camp in the desert. They also want to seduce the school cheerleaders, so they decide to attend cheerleading camp, ha ha. Their high school is in Hinsdale, Illinois, whose taxpayers will be surprised to learn the school team trains in the desert just like the Cubs, but will be even more surprised to learn the entire film was shot in California. And they will be puzzled about why many of the cheers involve chants of the letters F! U! — which stand for “Fired Up!” you see.

Oh, is this movie bad. The characters relentlessly attack each other with the forced jollity of minimum-wage workers pressing you with free cheese samples at the supermarket. Every conversation involves a combination of romantic misunderstandings, double entendres and flirtation that is just sad. No one in the movie has an idea in their bubbly little brains. No, not even Philip Baker Hall , who plays the football coach in an eruption of obligatory threats.

The plot involves a cheerleading competition along the lines of the one in “ Bring It On !” (2000), the “ Citizen Kane ” of cheerleader movies. That movie involved genuinely talented cheerleaders. This one involves ungainly human pyramids and a lot of uncoordinated jumping up and down. Faithful readers will recall that I often ask why the bad guys in movies wear matching black uniforms. They do in this one, too. The villains here are the Panther cheerleading squad. How many teams play in all black?

I could tell you about Carly, Sylvia, Bianca, Gwyneth, Marcy and the other sexy cheerleaders, but I couldn’t stir myself to care. There is an old rule in the theater: If the heroine coughs in the first act, she has to die in the third. Angela ( Hayley Marie Norman ) has the nicest smile and the best personality, and is onscreen early and often, so I kept expecting her big scene, but no: She seems destined to be the cheerleader’s cheerleader, pepping them up, cheering them on, smiling, applauding, holding up the bottom of the pyramid, laughing at funny lines, encouraging, bouncing in synch and projecting with every atom of her being the attitude: You go, girls! You’ve got a problem when you allow the most intriguing member of the cast to appear in that many scenes and never deal with her. That is not the movie’s fatal flaw, however. Its flaw is that I was thinking about things like that.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Molly Sims as Diora
• Hayley Marie Norman as Angela
• Eric Christian Olsen as Nick
• Philip Baker Hall as Coach Byrnes
• Nicholas D’Agosto as Shawn
• Amber Stevens as Sara
• Sarah Roemer as Carly
• Freedom Jones

Directed by

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Nicholas D'Agosto as Shawn; Eric Christian Olsen as Nick; Sarah Roemer as Carly; Molly Sims as Diora; David Walton as Dr. Rick

Home Release Date

Distributor.

• Screen Gems

Positive Elements   |   Spiritual Elements   |   Sexual & Romantic Content   |   Violent Content   |   Crude or Profane Language   |   Drug & Alcohol Content   |   Other Noteworthy Elements   | Conclusion

Movie Review

Football-playing pals Nick and Shawn are always devising new ways to “score,” both on and—especially—off the field. When the quarterback-receiver duo isn’t shredding defensive alignments en route to the end zone, they’re scanning the sidelines for any girl whose physical attributes might merit a different kind of pass.

So when the time comes to report for a predictably hot, humid preseason football camp in El Paso, Texas, the guys wonder if there might be a better way to sweat out the summer. That’s when Nick hits upon an idea. What if they conned their way into cheerleader camp? After all, their school’s cheer squad stinks! They’d probably take just about anybody.

Just think of it, the randy jocks reason, a boot camp full of 300 scantily clad beauties—all ripe for a personal pep rally. So the boys recruit Shawn’s well-connected little sister to give them a crash course in the basic skills of male cheerleading … and then make their way to camp.

Shawn sets his sights on his school’s head cheerleader, Carly. Nick “aspires” to bed the camp’s married coach, Diora. But no matter how things go with the guys’ first-round draft picks, the football studs are eager to see how many girls will tumble to their, um, charm.

Positive Elements

Shawn and Nick have a tightly woven friendship. Accordingly, they make small sacrifices and repeatedly help each other out of difficult situations. When Shawn starts to fall for Carly, he apologizes for his and Nick’s deception regarding their cheerleading motivation.

If there is any underlying positive message in this movie, it’s that there’s more to life, people and relationships than you might notice at first glance. John Lennon’s famous words, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” ring true several times throughout the film.

Spiritual Elements

A cheerleader prays for his squad before a competition.

Sexual & Romantic Content

As the skirt-chasing buddies roll into camp, they are met—just as they suspected—by toned, tanned, shapely young cheerleaders. “I think our bus crashed, and we’re in heaven,” Nick says approvingly. The camera zooms in on almost every one of the girls, it seems, as they strut, stretch and bounce through the film. Their attire? Formfitting outfits that generally expose as much skin as possible—that is, when they aren’t stripping their outfits off and splashing about in bras and panties at the local lake. Shirtless guys get occasional screen time as well.

Shawn and Nick seduce as many cheerleaders as possible. We don’t see the guys do more than kiss and grope their clueless conquests, but that’s more than sufficient to get the point across. It’s implied that they sleep with girl after girl after girl after girl. Amid Shawn and Nick’s heterosexual misadventures, Fired Up! also features several homosexual moments. Two girls kiss as the boys look on lustfully and approvingly. A male cheerleader grabs and repeatedly squeezes another man’s backside. A female cheerleader takes advantage of a naive teammate, rubbing both her rear and her chest in separate scenes. One of those scenes involves her climbing into bed with the other girl while she sleeps.

After a wet, underwear-clad practice session in the lake involving both girls and guys (and at least one sly sexual hook up), Shawn and Nick have their clothes stolen and must run back through campus naked. We catch fleeting glimpses of their bare backsides in the process. They’re stopped by the male head coach and make up a lame excuse about the advantage of practicing in the nude. The coach, of course, asks them to demonstrate their routine. Full-frontal nudity is avoided by the strategic placement of pom poms.

Nick almost succeeds in fully consummating his seduction of his married, thirtysomething coach. The two begin to strip off their clothes (we see his shirtless torso) and are on the verge of doing far more when her husband shows up.

Finally, fast-paced dialogue is packed with various sexual phrases, references and double entendres.

Violent Content

Nick gets punched in the face by Carly’s ex-boyfriend, Rick. Another character clocks Rick, knocking him to the ground. A female cheerleader adds insult to injury by kicking him as well. Elsewhere, a female cheerleader hits an opponent in the face. Unplanned tumbles and splats dig for laughs during the routines, as does some mild cuff-to-the-head slapstick.

Crude or Profane Language

About 30 uses each of the s-word and “d–n.” Many of the former come courtesy of an adult high school football coach. The f-word is never spoken, but we repeatedly hear the acronym “F.U.” played out as a double entendre. Another acronym evoking the f-word (“B.F.D.”) gets tossed into the mix, too. Characters make crude slang references to male and female body parts. They also abuse Jesus’ and God’s names, mixing up the latter with “d–n.” Nick has a penchant for employing vulgar—and bizarre—spiritual “slogans” when situations get intense, such as “Rock me sexy Jesus” and “Sweet Mary in a D-cup.” Dozens of other profanities, including “h—,” “a–” and “b–ch,” are also uttered along the way.

Drug & Alcohol Content

Though we don’t see them drinking, intoxication is implied on several occasions when teen guys stumble around, fall down and appear to pass out. Teens hold cups at a bonfire that probably contain alcohol. One guy holds a bottle of wine and asks another teen to join him, but they never get around to opening it. Another unopened bottle of wine is visible in a house where a bunch of football players are staying. A cheerleader says she’d be “totally up” for taking steroids. Nick makes comments about President Bush snorting coke in his youth.

Other Noteworthy Elements

A football coach’s foulmouthed reputation is treated as a big joke by students. And it’s unclear whether that coach is actually married to or is just having a fling with the school’s cheerleading coach.

Fired Up! sometimes manages—despite itself—to spotlight a nice (if slight) message about looking past the superficial judgments we tend to make in life.

But let’s not give this PG-13 romp too much credit.

The majority of the pic is evenly divided between babe, “boob” and sex jokes liberally mixed with nonstop ogling of scores and scores and scores of nubile adolescents. The filmmakers’ klieg lights also showcase frisky homosexual-minded teens and a high school guy who almost has sex with a married adult.

To hear the movie’s stars and producers talk, these subjects shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Regarding his role as Nick, Eric Christian Olsen said, “My mom’s going to be super proud of me. Nothing like watching your son do a naked cheer.” Indeed, nothing like it. Scenes like that one result in an unwanted mash-up of usually R-rated teen sex comedy clichés (from the likes of Superbad ) and cheerleading film silliness ( Bring It On ).

It’s a bit of a surprise, then, to discover that this retread of tired territory was actually “inspired” by something like a true story. Co-producers and friends Matthew Gross and Phil Needleman, it turns out, tried Nick and Shawn’s scheme in high school.

Gross relates, “A girl on our high school squad mentioned to Phil it would be great to have guys on the squad, so he asked if I’d like to join the squad with him. I thought he was nuts until he mentioned going to cheer camp with a thousand girls … genius!”

Needleman adds, “The morning stretches were my favorite part of the day. … We would stand back and stretch—”

“—our eyeballs,” Gross finishes. “We’d stretch our eyeballs.”

If that backstory doesn’t tell us everything we need to know, Gross adds this morsel about Fired Up! ‘s intended audience: “I laid out the story and partnered with my friend, Maxim ‘s Peter Jaysen, because I felt the story was perfect for Maxim ‘s demographic and audience.”

If the theater full of guffawing, college-age guys and girls I saw this movie with is any indication, Fired Up! has accomplished its dubious mission.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Common Sense Media Review

Raging hormones rule in crude cheerleading comedy.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this is a review of the PG-13-rated version of the movie and not the unrated DVD. Expect to find even more adult content in the unrated DVD. This crude comedy about two lust-driven teen boys is full of boundary-pushing sex and language content. The main characters are surrounded by -- and…

Why Age 15+?

Continuous bawdy language; every possible form of "s--t," plus "dick," "kicka--,

From the movie's opening moments to its final frames (including under the closin

One scene shows teen boys drinking, partying, getting drunk, and behaving ridicu

Several punches to the face; football hits during a game; cheerleaders fall and

Significant references to Staples Office Products are used to parody the concept

Any Positive Content?

Lecherous teen boys learn about caring and respect for the opposite sex -- but a

The main characters are selfish and obsessed with sex, though they do eventually

Continuous bawdy language; every possible form of "s--t," plus "dick," "kicka--," "t--ty bar," "bang," "douche monsters," "bitch," "a--hole," "dog knockers," "boob," "goddamn," "suck bucket," and more. One character is defined by the extensive euphemisms he creates for all things female and sexual.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

From the movie's opening moments to its final frames (including under the closing credits), raunchy teenage behavior is the focus of this film. There's enthusiastic kissing and passionate embracing throughout. Teen boys constantly ogle bikini-clad girls, girls in short shorts, and other girls of all shapes, sizes and ethnicity. There's no frontal nudity or bare breasts, but naked boys are seen from many angles on several occasions. Boys and girls grab each other's clothed butts. Same-sex female kissing in two scenes, and some gay and lesbian fondling. All of the above is played for comic effect and portrayed in a lighthearted manner.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

One scene shows teen boys drinking, partying, getting drunk, and behaving ridiculously.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Several punches to the face; football hits during a game; cheerleaders fall and hit the ground hard during practices -- no injuries.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Significant references to Staples Office Products are used to parody the concept of product placement in sports.

Positive Messages

Lecherous teen boys learn about caring and respect for the opposite sex -- but along the way their behavior is selfish, egotistical, and driven by their very randy urges. "Winning" is shown to be far less important than improving and doing the best you can.

Positive Role Models

The main characters are selfish and obsessed with sex, though they do eventually mend at least some of their ways. There's also plenty of stereotyping.

Parents need to know that this is a review of the PG-13-rated version of the movie and not the unrated DVD. Expect to find even more adult content in the unrated DVD. This crude comedy about two lust-driven teen boys is full of boundary-pushing sex and language content. The main characters are surrounded by -- and happily ogle -- hundreds of girls clad in the shortest of shorts and tiniest of bikinis. Boys are shown naked from both the back and front (private parts are covered by towels, etc. in the latter case). Though actual physical contact is limited to kissing and a few scenes of "grab ass," the characters are constantly talking and thinking about "hooking up." Not surprisingly then, the language can get vulgar and sexist -- and it's also peppered with "s--t" and the like. Underage characters drink, and there's some same-sex kissing and fondling; many of the gay characters are played very stereotypically, though it's all meant to be funny rather than disrespectful. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (10)
• Kids say (15)

Based on 10 parent reviews

sounds nice! for kids 12 and up!

Anyone who's parents don't mind watching a funny movie., what's the story.

Shawn ( Nicholas D'Agosto ) and Nick ( Eric Christian Olsen ) are the cutest (and cockiest and most lecherous) football heroes in their high school. They conspire to ditch their summer football program so they can join three hundred teen girls at cheerleading camp instead. Their dreams come true, but over the course of the movie they also encounter the joy and pain of first love; unexpected friendships with spirited, larger-than-life characters; and a lesson in the art of giving instead of taking.

Is It Any Good?

FIRED UP is actually a fairly clever teen comedy in spots. That's if you can get past the strong language, some amateurish acting, a first-time director (Will Gluck) who's far from sure-handed when it comes to the camera, and cheerleading routines that are clumsily shot and show little pizazz. It's a movie about acting dumb and exhibiting outrageous behavior, but it's always self-aware of its outlandishness.

D'Agosto and Olsen are consistently adorable and aware of their own ridiculousness, and they have impressive comic timing and delivery. Also appealing are supporting actors David Walton , Adhir Kalyan , and John Michael Higgins (in the requisite role of the adult buffoon). They're all obviously having fun with their over-the-top performances and the movie's broad tone. Fired Up may not be a teen classic, but it has its moments.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the consequences of the characters' behavior. Is there any fall-out from their drinking or obsession with sex in the movie? Would there be stronger consequences in the real world?

How would you describe the filmmakers' attitude toward the boys' behavior? What role does Carly play in clarifying that attitude?

Unlike in many other sports movies with underdog heroes, the Tigers don't win the cheerleading competition. What does the movie say about winning, losing, and doing your best?

Movie Details

• In theaters : February 20, 2009
• On DVD or streaming : June 9, 2009
• Cast : Eric Christian Olsen , Nicholas D'Agosto , Sarah Roemer
• Director : Will Gluck
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures
• Genre : Comedy
• Run time : 90 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : crude and sexual content throughout, partial nudity, language and some teen partying
• Last updated : April 5, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Bring It On

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Movie Review: Fired Up! (2009)

• General Disdain
• Movie Reviews
• One response
• --> March 20, 2009

One of my regrets in life was not scoring with any of the cheerleaders at my high school. Actually, I didn’t score with near enough girls at my school, but that is another story altogether. In Fired Up! , best friends Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) don’t appear to be plagued with my problems. Having slept with the majority of the available girls at their school, their issue at hand is how they can get some “fresh meat”. Solution? Skip football camp, sneak into a three-week long cheerleading camp with their school’s terrible cheer squad and prey upon the unsuspecting girls in the squads from neighboring schools.

However, shortly into watching the movie, I realized these shallow douchebags do have a deeper problem, they just didn’t know it — they’re starring in Fired Up! , a movie that can be summarily characterized as one of the more unimaginative and stupid teen comedies to come out in years.

How can that be, you ask. It has the requisite number of girls (who look great in cheerleader outfits, by the way) and it has a simple premise that is easily molded into any type of situational joke imaginable. What went wrong?

Two simple sentences sum it up quite nicely. It is not funny. There is no bare female skin when there should have been.

First time screenwriter, Freedom Jones (yes that’s her name) should probably give up her dreams of a Hollywood career now. Never before have I seen so many jokes and adolescent sexual innuendos fizzle seconds after they’ve been said or acted out. Ha — let’s laugh at all the superfluous ways the guys describe the male and female anatomy. Double ha — let’s laugh at how many times Coach Byrnes (Philip Baker Hall) can creatively say the word, “shit”. I’d say triple ha next, but I do believe I’ve covered all the “funny” stuff Ms. Jones could come up with. Not good.

It also doesn’t help much that the main players in Fired Up! (Shawn and Nick) are pompous assholes and are generally unlikable to anyone with a normal sense of sensibility. Even the prized head cheerleader, Carly (Sarah Roemer), is boring and unlikable. The supporting cast is equally forgettable — Carly’s scumbag boyfriend, Dr. Rick (David Walton), is supposed to be Shawn’s or Nick’s nemesis (I can’t remember which anymore), but his character just made me dislike Carly more than I previously did. Then there is cheer coach Keith (John Michael Higgins), who is there mostly so we can laugh at the antics of gay guy and slightly there so we can get introduced to his wife and fellow cheer coach Diora (Molly Sims).

This of course is the perfect segue into pointing out the film has some great looking ladies in it but offers nothing of substance to the whet the male appetite. If you’re looking for a bit skin (admittedly, I was hoping for something), you’ll be sorely disappointed; that is of course unless a brief appearance of a guy’s backside fizzles your soda pop. What a poor use of Danneel Harris’s and Annalynne McCord’s assets.

So if you couldn’t tell from my review, I’ll summarize: I’m not fired up about Fired Up! . I didn’t think I’d live to see the day when a mindless comedy with a lot of girls in short skirts and belly shirts didn’t pay off. I can scratch that off of my bucket list now.

I'm an old, miserable fart set in his ways. Some of the things that bring a smile to my face are (in no particular order): Teenage back acne, the rain on my face, long walks on the beach and redneck women named Francis. Oh yeah, I like to watch and criticize movies.

Movie Review: Ghosted (2023) Movie Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) Movie Review: Fantasy Island (2020) Movie Review: Snatched (2017) Movie Review: Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) Movie Review: ABCs of Death 2 (2014) Movie Review: Life After Beth (2014)

'Movie Review: Fired Up! (2009)' has 1 comment

April 7, 2009 @ 10:11 am 123ANAL!

this movie sucks balls.

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Film review: fired up.

A pair of smart-ass high school football players swap the pigskin for pom-poms when they sign up for cheerleading camp in "Fired Up!," an over-cranked teen comedy that only travels so far on its one-gag premise.

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A pair of smart-ass high school football players swap the pigskin for pom-poms when they sign up for cheerleading camp in “Fired Up!,” an over-cranked teen comedy that only travels so far on its one-gag premise.

In the absence of any real comic development, the film has characters spouting the same self-satisfied, rapid-fire ramblings crammed with as many pop culture references they can fit in without coming up for air. It’s like being trapped for an hour-and-a-half in a pound full of yappy puppies.

While first-time director Will Gluck and credited screenwriter Freedom Jones still manage to score a few worthy chuckles, the lack of a big name line-up and the decidedly sanitized PG-13 rating will unlikely get its targeted teen male audience too fired up.

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Figuring they’ll be able to dodge football camp and meet hot babes at the same time, Gerald C. Ford High students Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and wise-cracking Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) jump at the chance to join their school’s hapless cheer squad, unwittingly getting into the spirit of things much more than they had originally planned.

That’s about it for plot, which would have been OK if newcomer Gluck had strong comedic personalities in the lead roles who would be able to hold their own against his hyper, in-your-face directing style.

Despite their best efforts, fresh faces Olsen and D’Agosto come off as second-string Jon Heder and Zach Braff as they attempt to wrap their tongues around self-consciously clever dialogue that sounds like “Juno’s” Diablo Cody in double time.

There are still a few moments of amusement to be had, provided mainly by Christopher Guest regular John Michael Higgins as a career cheer camp coach whose mother swears “the first thing he did with his little baby hands was spirit fingers.”

Then there’s the outdoor screening of “Bring It On,” where the campers obsessively recite all the dialogue in unison.

More inspired stuff like that might have made “Fired Up!” something to really cheer for.

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Fired Up! (2009)

Directed by will gluck.

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Description by Wikipedia

Fired Up! is a 2009 American teen comedy film directed by Will Gluck, who is also credited with writing the movie under the pseudonym Freedom Jones. The main plot revolves around two popular high school student football players (portrayed by Eric Christian Olsen and Nicholas D'Agosto) who attend a cheerleading camp for the summer to get close to its 300 female cheerleaders.

Official Site

Part of collection, related movies.

Alternate Titles

They May Have Been Gone, But They’re Still Classic

By isa barnett.

• Mar 8, 2009

Fired Up! (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Updated: Mar 15, 2023

FIRED UP! (2009)

Starring Nicholas D’Agostino, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer, Molly Sims, David Walton, Philip Baker Hall, John Michael Higgins, Danneel Harris, Hayley Marie Norman, AnnaLynne McCord, Adhir Kalyan, Juliette Goglia, Smith Cho, Margo Harshman, Jake Sandvig, Francia Raisa and Edie McClurg.

Screenplay by Freedom Jones.

Directed by Will Gluck.

Distributed by Screen Gems.  90 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

If you have been spending sleepless nights wondering what would happen if the  Bring It On  movies were written by someone who could… you know, actually write… then congratulations, your long personal nightmare is finally over.

The rest of us will meet the news with a collective shrug of, “yeah, whatever,” but still be secure in the knowledge that if we ever need a snappy, clever cheerleader camp movie, we now do have a slightly better option.

The movie is the film debut of director Will Gluck, who was the mind behind the short-lived but quirky FOX sitcom  The Loop.   Gluck may very well have written the film as well – the credited screenwriter is “Freedom Jones” which sounds a whole lot like an alias.

Fired Up!  is about a pair of horn-dog high school jocks who decide to skip football camp to go to a cheerleading camp – where they figure they will be the only straight guys amongst hundreds of hot girls.  These high school guys are played by Gluck’s  Loop  star Eric Christian Olsen (who is in his early 30s) and former  Heroes  regular Nick D’Agostino (late 20s) – both a little too old for the roles, but they seem to have immature down well enough (particularly Olsen).

Their evil plan is working perfectly – both of the guys are scoring left and right – when Shawn (D’Agostino) falls for Carly, the one cheerleader who seems to see through all their bull (played by Sarah Roemer of  Disturbia. )  Making things worse, she has a complete asshole of an older boyfriend who cheats on her (David Walton).  Suddenly, it is about love for Shawn, not sex.

Besides, the guys suddenly realize that cheerleading is hard, important work… just as important as football.  Plus, the cheerleaders smell better than the football players. Thus the guys have to decide if they will stick around for the big cheer-off or meet up with their football buddies at the big summer blowout bash at the summer house of one of their teammate’s parents.

If that plotline sounds a little familiar… congratulations, you’ve seen a teen sex comedy in the last thirty years.

However, if the plot of  Fired Up!  is clichéd, threadbare and a little dumb (and it most certainly is), the nice surprise is that the dialogue is often snappy, smart, current and very funny.  It’s almost like “Freedom Jones” knew how stupid the whole genre was and he decided to deconstruct it from the inside.  There is even a scene where the entire camp views the first  Bring It On  movie and yells out the bad dialogue in time with the film – as if it were a midnight movie like  Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The filmmakers of  Fired Up!  may very well be trying to be trying to go the  Rocky Horror  route – take a stupid, bad old genre and then camp it up smartly – laughing with it and at it at the same time.  They are not completely successful; they commit to the plot to an extent that they can’t completely mock it.  Therefore,  Fired Up!  comes off as a weird hybrid – is it a teen sex comedy or a parody of a teen sex comedy?  If the filmmakers can’t seem to decide, how can we?

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2009 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 8, 2009.

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Fired Up! (United States, 2009)

They might as well have called this Cheer Movie . About the only thing to differentiate this dud of a comedy from the likes of Date Movie, Epic Movie , and Disaster Movie is the absence of the names Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg on the credits. Instead, the director is a first-timer named Will Gluck. Based on the evidence here, one hopes he will do what Seltzer and Friedberg didn't and stop making movies.

Regardless of how low your expectations are regarding Fired Up! , it will still surprise you, and not in a good way. I don't approach a movie like this with a greater hope than that it will make me laugh a few times. Even with the bar set so low, Fired Up! can't deliver. This a morass of failed humor. Every joke is tired, obvious, and telegraphed. It's like going to a family reunion and hearing Uncle Bob tell the same gags he has told at every family reunion for the past twenty years. At one point, they might have been worth a chuckle or two but now you'll do just about anything, including actions that would be considered illegal in all 50 states, to get him to shut up.

I suppose this is intended to be a parody of Bring It On , although that's by no means certain. The concept of parody implies humor and there's nothing resembling that here. To make matters worse, Fired Up! is obviously an R-rated movie masquerading as a PG-13. The emasculation is so painfully evident that it calls attention to itself: skinny-dipping scenes in which women are in their underwear or where their breasts are below the water line (the nudity, as is almost always the case in PG-13 comedies, refers to bare male buttocks), euphemisms for "fuck," and softening of the most extreme sexual innuendo. I don't know if a raunchier, balls-to-the-wall approach would have made Fired Up! a better movie (probably not), but it at least would have seemed more honest. Undoubtedly, there will be an "unrated" DVD that will restore some of the R-rated content that was clipped in the editing room.

The story is a typical example of the one-line so-called "high concept." Two high school football players, Shawn (Nicholas D'Agosoto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen), attend cheerleading camp to get girls. Toss in a competition at the end, "quirky" supporting characters, and a few subplots, like Shawn falling for Carly (Sarah Roemer), the captain of the squad, and Nick getting the hots for the "much older" Diora (Molly Sims), one of the camp's directors. Perhaps the saddest thing of all is seeing respected actor Philip Baker Hall "shitting" his way through the movie. (The financial crisis must really be hitting home for him - I guess Holiday Inn isn't paying enough these days.) There may be a restriction to the number of times "fuck" can be used to achieve the PG-13 Holy Grail, but Fired Up! proves that shit has no limit.

The most amusing aspect of the film is either (a) unintentional or (b) so subversive that I may be guilty of underestimating the filmmakers. (The smart money is on (a).) The characters in Fired Up! are supposed to be 17 or 18. In general, that means the actors would typically be in their early 20s, with perhaps Sarah Roemer's 24 being on the high end. But no… Nicholas D'Agosoto is 28, Danneel Harris is 29, and Eric Christian Olsen is 31. (He still falls three years short of the all-time record for oldest movie teenager: 34-year old Stockard Channing in Grease .) Olsen, by the way, is in the unenviable position of not being able to claim that Fired Up! is the worst film on his resume. He played the young Jim Carrey role in Dumb and Dumberer .

I can think of no reason why anyone would want to see Fired Up! and the movie-going public seems to agree with that assessment - I was one of only three people in the theater where it was showing. The film relies on the clichéd outtakes-during-the-closing-credits approach to generate a few cheap, late laughs. But even these aren't funny. How bad does a movie have to be that even the bloopers are duds? About halfway through the proceedings, the temptation to slip into the next-door theater arose - until I remembered that the movie playing there was Confessions of a Shopaholic . At that moment, I began to contemplate the similarities between film critics and garbage men. Both deal with a lot of crap, but the trash collectors get better pay.

Comments Add Comment

• Princess Bride, The (1987)
• City Lights (1931)
• This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
• Feast (2006)
• Dumb and Dumberer (2003)
• Freddy Got Fingered (2001)
• (There are no more better movies of Nicholas D'Agosto)
• Rocket Science (2007)
• (There are no more worst movies of Nicholas D'Agosto)
• Last Kiss, The (2006)
• Thing, The (2011)
• Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012)
• (There are no more worst movies of Eric Christian Olsen)
• (There are no more better movies of Sarah Roemer)
• Disturbia (2007)
• (There are no more worst movies of Sarah Roemer)

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Fired Up! Reviews

No All Critics reviews for Fired Up!.

Fired Up Review

Goofy fun, but nothing to really cheer too loudly about..

2.5 out of 5 Stars, 5/10 Score

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Fired Up Review

10 Jul 2009

It’s a sad day when the best thing you can say about a comedy is that it’s not as bad as the ____ Movie franchise, but that’s where we are with this limp entry into the ‘high schoolers getting laid’ genre. Here, they’re not even nerds; two footballers — both, like, supercute (read: smug bastards) — decide that they’d rather shag girls than endure their football camp, so go to cheerleading classes instead.

You can count on one hand the decent gags; the rest is down to either a low kill-rate during the scripting process or bad timing in the editing suite (they can’t even get the evil Purple Cobra-like rivals right), leaving a charmless, witless, lumbering mess.

"Teen Sex Comedy"

What You Need To Know:

(PaPaPa, HoHo, B, C, LLL, VV, SS, NN, MMM) Very strong hedonistic, pagan worldview with strong homosexual elements, though one cheerleading squad prays before competition, asking God to help them and “to fix the economy”; 63 obscenities, 25 chants of the abbreviations for “Fired Up” which is to be understood as an obscenity, song with six obscenities, graphic name calling, scatological comments, and 11 profanities; strong violence includes teenager in fistfight, teenagers fall in cheerleading practice, comedic scene of teen falling from balcony and teenager falling in pool unconscious; constant discussion of sex by teenagers, dozens of implied sexual relations among teenagers, implied adultery between underage teenager and female coach, much kissing and heavy petting by teenagers, including lesbian teenagers kissing, lesbian petting, homosexual grabs buttocks of male character, suggested homosexual actions by male coach when hugging male teenager, cheerleading poses which are to represent both homosexual and heterosexual sex acts; rear male nudity, upper male nudity, male characters fully nude but strategically placed pom poms cover private parts, dozens of teenage girls in short shirts, low cut tops and bare midriffs, male and female teen characters strip to underwear and go swimming; teenage drinking and drunkenness; no smoking or illegal drugs; and, lying, deception, no respect for adults or adult coaches, adultery.

More Detail:

FIRED UP! is the story of two high school football players, Shawn and Nick, who decide to skip football camp and join the cheerleading camp in order to meet girls and to have sexual relations. At first, the plan works, and Nick and Shawn meet and have sexual relations with dozens of cheerleaders at the camp. However, Shawn falls for the squad leader from their own school. Meanwhile, Nick continues to try to have sexual relations with the female adult coach, who is married.

Along the way, the boyfriend of the squad leader exposes Nick and Shawn’s real motive for being at camp. They not only must patch things up with their fellow cheerleaders, but also try to win the big cheerleading competition as well.

The movie is a slick, well-made, funny movie with a depraved, abhorrent center. The cast is very endearing, especially Nicholas d’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen as the two football jocks turned cheerleaders. The script is very tight and there are many laughs, even ones that are not sexually based – though those are few and far between. The music drives the story and the directing is well executed.

The fact that the movie is so well made is, in fact, the greatest source of moral danger. The movie’s message is that it’s assumed that teenagers will have multiple sex partners, both heterosexual and homosexual. This cinematic poison is coated with much sugar, and a willing teenage audience will swallow this pagan message readily.

To keep the PG-13 rating, the sexual scenes are all implied and not depicted, though there is no question as to what was to have taken place. There are literally dozens of such “hook ups” and while there is supposed to be a moral high road in that Shawn loses interest in the casual sex once he meets Carly, it is implied and assumed that he and Carly will be sexually active with each other.

There’s much foul language, but again, there are no “f” words to keep the movie from getting an R rating. Instead of overt nude scenes, they are cleverly staged with male characters having pom poms displayed strategically.

This is a movie that is very overt with its immoral agenda, but very well made, which may draw many teens to the box office. Media-wise parents and teenagers will understand this pagan movie for what it is and want to avoid it.

It is movies like FIRED UP! that have led to the huge surges in teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among youths aged 12 to 24. If you are at all outraged about the recent stories of a single mother on welfare in California giving birth to eight test-tube babies and the 13-year-old boy in England becoming a father, then you will help MOVIEGUIDE® and your local community make sure that movies like FIRED UP! fail financially because not many people go to see them. As many studies have shown, pre-marital sex leads to poverty, violent crime, divorce, domestic abuse, and disease, and entertainment programming that depicts such immorality encourages younger viewers to engage in it.

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Time Out says

If today’s cheerleader – half porn star, half girl next door – distracts from the game, shouldn’t the cheerleader movie distract us from a lack of believable plot points and honest jokes? Puppyish chick magnet Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and football captain Nick ( Eric Christian Olsen ) have pulling down to a science.

Then it occurs to them that joining cheerleaders for two weeks of pom-pom training sounds more fun than grunting in Arizona with other guys. Sure enough, cheerleading camp is a vision of lithe women in short shorts but conscience strikes; after much success in the sack, the boys find they enjoy cheering, plus Shawn pursues a sweet hometown girl. It turns out ‘Fired Up!’ isn’t a dirty movie, despite the thigh on display, and it sports a more brainless evil boyfriend to make our heroes likeable. But trashy values place this generic comedy decidedly in the Bush era.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 10 July 2009
• Duration: 90 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Will Gluck
• Screenwriter: Freedom Jones
• Eric Christian Olsen
• AnnaLynne McCord
• Philip Baker Hall
• Sarah Roemer
• Nicholas D'Agosto
• Danneel Harris
• John Michael Higgins
• David Walton
• Adhir Kalyan

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