Fired Up! (Movie Review)
Originally written and posted on March 11, 2009.
Fired Up!
I think there’s something wrong with me. Perhaps there’s something in my Altoids that’s making me nicer or more generous in reviews, but whatever the reason, I’ve seen a bunch of movies that by any standard should be deemed terrible, and yet I can’t bring myself to crucify them. Maybe the typical winter cinema drought has lowered my standards, or maybe I’m too obsessed with a crappy film’s silver linings that I’m deluding myself into thinking I don’t throw away $10 per week on celluloid dross. Whatever the reason is, I actually quite enjoyed Fired Up!, and that is reason enough to devote this introduction to some light introspection.
Fired Up! is the story of two high school football jocks who suddenly discover there’s something homoerotic about a bunch of muscularly headstrong men climbing over each for sport. When they realize their summer football camp will be in a hotter, sweatier place than they had anticipated, they agree that cheer camp is a better idea instead. And who can blame them? Would you rather spend your summer with a pack of grunting knuckleheads or hundreds of the hottest, fittest girls you’ve ever seen? Exactly.
Despite the title of the film being an obvious acronym for a common expletive phrase, Fired Up! is strictly PG13. The most offensive expletive is “shit,” and even then the word is used sparingly. Clothes get taken off frequently, but there’s never any nudity, any of the vulgar dialogue is often supplanted with weird gibberish that has a sort of bizarre charm to it, lewd behaviour is often implied and not overtly displayed, etc. Don’t misunderstand me, the core of Fired Up! might as well be a Tucker Max story adapted by Kevin Smith, but the vulgarity is toned down so much that it becomes strangely appealing. The reason for this is obvious: an R rating limits the potential audience which in turn cuts profit. Scale the content back far enough, secure the PG13 label, and you just tripled your potential sales.
So the story is by the numbers and entirely predictable. The cheerleading squad that wears matching black totalitarian uniforms, yeah, those are the evil guys. How will our underdogs overcome their rivals? Why, by performing the impossibly difficult “Fountain of Troy” cheer manoeuvre that’s been explicitly forbade by the camp coaches, of course! Though it’s worth pointing out that our heroes aren’t looking for the gold so much as they just want to get out of last place, not at all unlike how the movie itself isn’t looking to be Citizen Kane (or even Bring It On) so much as it just wants to be a decent time. And you know what? I applaud that. The only ambition of Fired Up! is to kill time, and no other Winter release has done so as effectively as it has.
What I did like about Fired Up! was the friendship between the two leads, Nick and Shawn (Eric Christian Olsen and Nicholas D’Agosto), starring in their very own 90 minute long “Axe” commercial. You know how in most buddy films there has to be a plot point that drives the two protagonists apart before they eventually reunite and triumph together? That never happens to Shawn and Nick. The friendship these two characters share is rock solid. They always have each others back in both success and failure, and I quite enjoyed that fact. It’s refreshing to see at least one novel idea present in what could otherwise be easily written off as midwinter tripe, so I’m at the very least thankful for that.
But alas, in the end Fired Up! isn’t a good movie, let alone a great one. It gets a mild recommendation because it’s a success unto itself. Just don’t ask for much else, and you’ll be fine.
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