Reviews & Previews - Fired Up

Posted on Wednesday, March 04, 2009 at 05:00 PM

Fired Up

By: S. Tran

Starring: Nicholas D'Agosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer
Directed By: Will Gluck
Running Time: 89 minutes
Rated: PG-13

What Recession?

There is one good thing I took from this movie and that is that the recession can't possibly be as bad as people say if they managed to convince people to shell out millions of dollars to make this sorry film. If you liked "Bring It On" then this film will make you really like "Bring It On" because it makes that movie look like an Oscar winner in comparison.

Fired Up is a story about two womanizing high school jocks who con their way into cheerleader camp in order to "meet" as many girls as they can. D'Agosto is Shawn, the loud, obnoxious one and Olsen plays Nick, the relatively restrained foil to his friend's over the top antics. Along the way though Nick begins to have some real feelings for his teammate Carly (Roemer) and hilarity ensues, or it was supposed to.

Somehow this movie dragged itself from straight to dvd hell and managed to have a theatrical release which means that you can hear D'Agostos annoying banter in surround sound on the big screen. His acting reminded me of those people who think speaking loudly to someone who doesn't speak English will somehow make them understand it better. D'Agosto seemed to believe that if he said his lines with enough volume they would magically become funny.

Olsen is marginally better and reminded me of Owen Wilson with his boy next door looks and sarcastic manner. But even that couldn't do much to save the movie from the lame script and dialogue.

Probably the only thing I found funny about this film was how Carly's college boyfriend was supposed to be the bad guy in the film when in fact he was just an older version of the two douche bags in the lead roles. I guess we were supposed to root for the frat boy teenagers but boo the actual frat boy.

This is an uninspired attempt at a teen comedy that probably won't even appeal to its target audience. We've all seen this done many times before and better.

1.5 out of 5 stars