The latest entry in the perennial teens-getting-laid genre, Fired
Up follows two high school students on a trip to cheerleading camp
where they attempt to get their rocks off as much as possible. The
twist, though, is that unlike in other movies of this
ilk—Porky’s, American Pie, or
Superbad—our suspiciously mature-looking protagonists
(played by Nicholas D’Agosto, 28, and Eric Christian Olsen, 31) aren’t
dweebish losers, but rather football-playing studs who are successfully
able to get just about any girl into the sack.
Therefore, the movie becomes about their conquests to bag ‘n’ tag
the two women in the entire cheerleading camp who possess enough
self-respect not to sleep with them: Carly (Sarah Roemer, 24), the
captain of their high school squad, and Diora (Molly Sims, 35), the
married head counselor of the camp.
Morally reprehensible? Yes. But also funny. The repartee between
D’Agosto and Olsen is speedy, smart, and ambiguously gay, and Carly’s
med-student boyfriend, who calls himself “Dr.” Rick (played by David
Walton, 30) is so hilariously douchebaggy that I wanted to see a whole
movie about him: He wears Crocs, listens to shitty music like Deep Blue
Something and Lou Bega, and calls Carly pet names like “Carls Barkley”
and “Carly Fries.” Meanwhile, John Michael Higgins—currently so
unfunny in that terrible Selma Blair/Molly Shannon sitcom—has
some genuinely hysterical lines as the cheer instructor.
The movie’s initial misogyny cuts both ways; our two stalwart heroes
are just as much sex objects as their bevy of conquests, and the only
nudity in the entire movie is male. In fact, despite all the foreplay,
there isn’t any actual sex in Fired Up. The PG-13 world it
inhabits is more fanciful than that of Hellboy or Lord of the
Rings: Everyone is attractive and fit, there is no such thing as an
STD (let alone an unwanted pregnancy), and the answer to everyone’s
problems is some positive team spirit followed by a roll in the hay.
Would you really mind escaping to that world for a while?
I want to go to there.
I CAN’T STOP SAYING IT.