There’s trouble in a comedy when the preppy bad guy who is going out
with the girl the good guy likes is no more intolerable than the good
guy who complains how intolerable he is. I don’t care if the bad guy is
mocked for listening to Chumbawumba and Lou Bega, Fired Up! has
no right pretending it’s above that music. Ten years ago, “Tubthumping”
would appear on its soundtrack without irony.
The problem runs deeper. Nobody wants to see a comedy about cool
people. Fired Up! therefore sucks for the same reason the first
Van Wilder movie sucks. It sucks for a lot of other reasons,
too, but primarily because its leads have no dreams to realize, or
oppressions to overcome. They’re smug idiots who aren’t funny or
perceptive, but keep commenting on things that aren’t funny in ways
they think are perceptive.
There’s an absurd amount of dialogue in this movie. Screenwriter
Freedom Jones has no understanding of an economy of words. When high
school sex addicts Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto, 28) and Nick (Eric
Christian Olsen, 31) join cheerleader camp, they’re stuck on a bus
where cheerleaders make a song out of everything they pass. The weak
execution is such that the gag is only conceptually funny—but not
actually. The same can be said for the cheerleading mascot never
removing his uniform. But one must also deal with nearly an entire
movie about two idiots overestimating their appeal.
For showtimes, see Movie Times. I fought the
law, and palermo@thecoast.ca won.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2009.