FIRED UP! Two-and-a-half cheers for raunchy teen comedy!

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Gimme an F! Gimme a U! Gimme a... N!: Rude, crude comedy redeems itself by using real humour amid the horndoggery. (SCREEN GEMS)

It would be news if Fired Up! weren't moronic and adolescent.

A comedy about two horny high school football players who infiltrate cheerleading camp to score women couldn't possibly be anything else. It's also rude and crude, until it reaches its predictable and disingenuously sweet conclusion.

What's surprising, though, is that within this premise lies a streak of giddy humour that makes the whole endeavour more tolerable than it ought to be. As best friends and teammates, Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen aren't your typical dumb jocks. They're quick-witted and verbal, and the way they bounce off each other with rat-a-tat dialogue that often gives Fired Up! an engaging energy. (The script, credited to Freedom Jones, is crammed with pop-culture references you might not expect but it also feels a little too self-consciously clever in that now-familiar Diablo Cody vein.)

In his feature debut, longtime TV writer-producer Will Gluck directs these hijinks in spectacularly unremarkable fashion, but even he couldn't screw up the comic talents of John Michael Higgins as the cheer camp's overzealous Coach Keith, "the skipper of this spirit ship."

90210 star AnnaLynne McCord snarls and glares her way through her role as the camp's obligatory head mean girl. (It is vaguely amusing, though, that the members of her Panthers squad follow her around everywhere in a rigid V-formation with deadly looks on their faces.)

The Panthers are the top cheerleading team every year, while the Tigers of Gerald R. Ford High School, where quarterback Nick (Olsen) and wide receiver Shawn (D'Agosto) play, are the perennial cellar dwellers. Team captain Carly (Sarah Roemer) reluctantly lets the guys tag along to cheer camp, figuring it'll improve their performance to add a little muscle.

After bulldozing their way through a dizzying number of girls in record time, sweet-talking Shawn finds himself falling for Carly because she's the one girl who's too smart to succumb to his come-ons. Nick, meanwhile, is wowed by Coach Keith's inordinately hot wife, Diora (a beautiful but stiff Molly Sims), even though she's ancient. Like, 30 -- the age both our stars are hovering around in real life.

But first, Shawn must get through Carly's smarmy, scheming boyfriend, a pre-med student who likes to call himself Dr. Rick (David Walton) and who blares hideous '90s pop songs from his convertible BMW each time he pulls up to cheer camp. ("Chumbawamba," he declares. "The soundtrack to my life!") The running gag is usually pretty good for a laugh. So are scenes like the one in which the cheerleaders watch Bring It On en masse, and recite every line along with it, as if it were their own perky version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Fired Up! isn't a cheerocracy, but it's not total anarchy, either.

-- The Associated Press

Fired Up

Starring Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen

Kildonan Place, Polo Park

14A

Two and a half stars out of five

Other voices:

Selected excerpts from reviews of Other voices Fired Up!

Fired Up! is both smarter and dumber than necessary, vacillating as it does between being a parody of teen sex comedies and a fresh example of the sub-genre.

-- John P. McCarthy, Boxoffice

It may be as dumb as you'd expect from this team, but Fired Up! is still the best "dumb cheerleader" comedy since Bring It On.

-- Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

The teensploitation premise is like something a porn filmmaker from the '70s might have come up with. But Fired Up! has one added quirk: The script... is a riot of tongue­twisting ironic sleaze.

-- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Fired Up! delivers consistent laughs, and it treats its female characters (and even its gay ones) with enough dignity that you won't hate yourself in the morning.

-- Alonso Duralde, MSNBC

An over-cranked teen comedy that only travels so far on its one-gag premise.

-- Michael Rechtshaffen, Holly­wood Reporter

Whoever thought we would long for the richer, funnier dignity of American Pie?

-- Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 20, 2009 D5