Film Reviews

Fired Up

• Rating:
• Director: Will Gluck
• Starring: Eric Christian Olsen
• Details: US/91mins 15A

There has to be a certain level of awareness when two men, perilously close to 30, are playing 17 year old High School Students looking to get their rocks off. Olsen in particular grew too old looking for this genre the guts of a decade ago, but in his defence, he does manage a few chuckles here. This is the first comedy I've seen in a long time with such a singular abrasive vision. There are varying alterations on innumerable insults, some of which may actually make you laugh. But whilst watching it, you can't shake the feeling that some of the cast aren't in on the joke, and the director only sporadically realises how silly the whole thing is.
Story sees two "teen" football players, who regularly use their popularity in school to sleep with unsuspecting (thick) girls, come up with a brainwave that will see them drowning in even more females - cheer camp. These chaps are comfortable enough in their own sexuality to head along, prance about in tight t-shirts and have a attractive young woman standing on their shoulders without looking up her skirt, in the hope of scoring more chicks. Needless to say they see more ass than Russell Brand's en suite, but, naturally, one of the lads has a sensitive side that just needed exploring. In between getting laid, they get quite good at cheering, and the team begins to rely on them for motivation skills such as skinny dipping in the evening.
Obviously inspired by American Pie; the genre has passed on about ten years now, making way for more intuitive comedy fare that deals with adolescence in an entirely more engaging manner. Superbad tread very similar ground, with a simple set-up designed to inflict as many body laughs as possible; but something about Fired Up feels slightly half-assed, like the filmmakers were going to go all out, but panicked at the last minute and instead settled for generic, PG-13 territory.
It does have some laughs, and most of them filter through Olsen, who channels 'Pie's' Stifler and Van Wilder to tickle the funny bone. There is also a trendy, poppy soundtrack and a bunch of ridiculously fit cheerleaders bouncing up and down. Not bad, it's just the bar has been set too high to pay for this type of sluggish comedy nowadays.

Review by Mike Sheridan