Fired Up!

Fired Up! is a film so desperate to telegraph its jokes to the audience that even its title has an exclamation mark. Cheeleaders in the film like to shout the title by chanting "F! U!" and if you think that joke is clever, please buy a gas oven so you can place your head in it. Then again, given how the camera constantly frames these teenagers as if they're trying to cheer at the film's audience, these chants appear to be aimed at those who would lay down good money to watch this, and frankly, we all deserve it.

Fired Up! concerns two coagulated sacks of douche resin contained by the sewn-together flesh of Chinese workers who died in a sweatshop owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. Their names are Shawn and Nick, and I shall withhold the names of the actors who portray because I'm feeling particularly charitable today. That any woman would sleep with them is inherently sexist, but the girls of their high school are so uniformly stupid that one wonders if these boys aren't crossing some severe ethical boundaries as well.

Shawn and Nick are on the football team and have hooked up with every girl on campus. Except, apparently, any of the cheerleaders. As such, Shawn and Nick decide to quit the football team -- over the perfunctory threats from Phillip Baker Hall, who deserves some civilian medal of courage for this, or at least some sort of fundraiser to prevent him taking these roles again -- in order to go to cheerleading camp to score some of these fine ladies. Comedy!

To compensate for the staggering inanity of these two idiots, the cheerleading squad has about as much flexibility as a group of wounded veterans undergoing arduous physical rehabilitation. Neither Shawn nor Nick does much for the team other than do their damnedest to ensure that the next generation of cheerleaders will soon be on their way, yet Carly, the head cheerleader ostensibly too smart to fall for these dopes' tricks, mentions that the squad has never been better, leading to a love connection. Well, maybe she is sufficiently intelligent to spot Nick's come-ons -- Shawn by this point is of course in love with her -- as anyone could see through his shtick.

The accredited screenwriter for Fired Up! is Freedom Jones, the only funny aspect of this film as I felt trapped by the barrage of clichés and a sorely misguided appraisal of wit. At one point, Carly's pre-med boyfriend Rick (who looks like some horrible experiment to cross-breed with David Hasselhoff and Nick Cave) boasts that he's taking her to Red Lobster where, "We've got a seat behind a plant so people can't see how much we'll be all-you-can-eating. If you know what I mean." Is that a double entendre? And then Rick mimes hip-thrusting. Well, whatever half-assed euphemism he just used for oral sex doesn't even apply anymore. However, I've found absolutely nothing on this Freedom Jones; hell, I can't even find this person's gender. Is it possible then, that the real writer took a gander at the final draft and suffered a crisis of conscience? If Freedom Jones is a false name and it continues to appear on films such as this, it could prove a match for Alan Smithee in no time.

The film ends, of course, with a competition, following the obligatory Big Misunderstanding. The Tigers face off against the Panthers, who are clad in all-black which is a perfectly ordinary thing. As it turns out, oh who gives a damn? If you like mincing gay stereotypes, sexist depictions of women, nonexistent wit, a little child who swears as if it was inherently funny and repugnant assholes presented as heroes, then have I got a film for you. Also, could you move a bit more to the left? Just a bit more. Near the big X.