Movie review: Fired Up!

By Chance Dibben

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Following a pair of friends who opt out of football training camp for a cheer camp to broaden their sexual reach, Fired Up! has little redeeming factor other than that it is a fluid waste of time. We are spryly carried through its 90 minutes of laughs as cheap and innocuous as a sitcom rerun.

A good insight into the humor of Fired Up! can be gleaned from the name of the summer cheer camp at the center of the movie—Fired Up University—“Give me a F, give me a U, what does that spell? F.U.!”

Aside from its sitcomish humor, one of the film’s many flaws is that it plays things too safe. Reneging on its teen-movie promise of exposed coed gallivanting on screen, Fired Up! chooses to keep its characters clothed (with the exception of one borderline offensive caricature of a gay cheerleader). This, I bet, was done to safeguard a PG-13 rating, which really doesn’t mean anything with so many four-letter words flaunted in the film.

Judd Apatow’s comedies have shown crude and heart can work together, something that Fired Up! seemingly tries to do. But the filmmakers miscalculated raunch and the false redemption of the boorish central characters point to its cheap heart.

Rating: 0 out of 4 stars

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