Fired Up

The promotional material for Fired Up started appearing in movie theaters just after New Year's in the form of large cardboard stand-alone displays. The initial letters "F.U." were written large in orange, and underneath was written the phrase "Two guys. 300 girls. You do the math."

It was almost as if the distributors wanted to scream out: "this is going to be the worst movie of the year." There would surely be plenty of tits and ass, and gross body-part jokes, and wretchedly stupid juvenile humor. It would surely be a triumph of the animalistic man.

I knew I would have to see it on a day when I could take sitting through this kind of movie. It came out last Friday and by Saturday morning, I was in Tyngsboro at the AMC, to get it crossed off my list early.

But right from the opening scene, something was wrong. The movie was not only watchable, but fun. I rarely laugh during movies, and during many so-called comedies, I don't laugh at all. But I laughed many times during this movie. This movie was downright funny.

Here's the deal: the movie is not really a "guy fantasy" movie. It's only being promoted as such. Sure, it has elements of that genre, but in reality it's a cheerleading movie, with plot and characters aimed more at young women than young men. Moreover, it's a cheerleading competition movie, smack in the subgenre of Bring It On (2000), a movie to which it pays homage in a rather unique way, by having hundreds of cheerleaders recite the words along with Kirsten Dunst as they watch a screening at camp. Awesome!

The two male lead characters (Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen) are a cut and a half above the usual "party dude" characters, and it obvious that they have an affinity for cheerleading right from the first scene. The story follows their journey of self discovery as they infiltrate a cheerleading camp with the ostensible purpose of making it with as many hot babes as possible. But along the way they find out that they actually like cheering, and they also fall in love for real.

For much of the story, however, they fall into the category of impostors, and thus the story tension revolves around their avoiding being exposed. The plot trajectory of this type of story is fairly established, in that at some point, they both realize that what began as a charade is now genuine. They actually like being male cheerleaders. But because they do not confess their initial dishonor, according to the rules of classical justice their deceit must be punished. Thus they must be publicly exposed even after their change of heart, and their conversion to being "genuine." In this case, the exposure is through sabotage-by-romantic-rival.

After this seemingly unfair public humiliation, they justifiably lose the trust of their teammates and love interests, and are thus expelled from the camp. To do this, they must fully reject their previous bestial selves and turn their back on their animalistic friends. The final part of the story involves their regaining of their teammates' trust and the restoration of the "genuine" path. This restoration is simultaneous with the resolution of the love story, as well as the climax of the cheerleading competition (which had a fun ending that avoided cheap shortcuts).

This movie has already been declared D.O.A. at the box office and will surely be panned by plenty of sophisticated reviewers. But they are, I assert, completely full of shit. The only problem with this movie is that it is too cross-genre, and the elements of the "oversexed party guy" movie that are present in it will give plenty of people just enough excuse to pile on this movie to prove their so-called artistic bona fides.

But like I said, I laughed plenty, and thought it was fun. In a way, it about the triumph of the higher enlightened male self over the degraded animalistic man. There was even very sympathetic treatment of male homosexuality. I can absolutely say that this will be on my 2009 list for Movies I Didn't Hate.