Superbad meets Bring it On!

Grade: D

One time, at cheer camp, 300 girls...

Screen Gems' latest effort Fired Up! stars Nicolas D'Agosto (Heroes) and Eric Christian Olsen (Eagle Eye) as Shawn Colfax and Nick Brady, the two best athletes on the Gerald R. Ford High School football team. As the summer approaches, the fact that Shawn and Nick will be spending their academic off-season at football camp just doesn't sit well.

After Nick hatches a scheme for the two to ditch football camp and join their high school cheerleading team for cheer camp instead, they find themselves immersed in a sea of gorgeous young women. Everything seems perfect for our muse-enchanted protagonists until Shawn falls for Carly (Sarah Roemer, Asylum), the Tigers' beautiful head cheerleader, who is suspicious of their motives at cheer camp.

Luckily for them, the Gerald R. Ford cheerleading team has seen better days, placing last in the final competition every year. Since they've yet to have a guy on the team, the extra muscle quells strong suspicions - at least to an extent - in hopes of vaulting the squad to victory. In order to win Carly over, the boys must buckle down and come up with some new moves to prove Shawn's intentions before the cheer competition finals.

Going by plot summary alone, Fired Up! had the potential to be a semi-entertaining comedy geared toward a high school audience. There's one problem, and a big one at that: Shawn and Nick make better geeks than jocks, toting less sex appeal than an episode of Mythbusters. As a comedy team they're awkward and cumbersome, lacking the chemistry necessary to carry a movie of this caliber.

TV producer/writer Will Gluck (The Loop) makes his directorial debut with Fired Up! and is joined by first time screenplay writer Freedom Jones. With a ragtag cast and a Superbad meets Bring it On plot synopsis, it would be surprising if this film lasts after its first week at the box office.

Eric Christian Olsen, best known for his Razzie-nominated performance in Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd, and his small roles in Beerfest and The Comebacks, delivers more of the same in Fired Up! It seems that he's not looking for recognition or trying to elevate his career, as evidenced by his continual involvement in lame-tard roles in films with plot schemes that could be thought up by a 5-year-old.

However, Nicolas D'Agosto is looking for Fired Up! to skyrocket his budding acting career after only making short appearances in Heroes as West Rosen and on The Office for three episodes as Hunter.

Unfortunately, Fired Up! isn't the movie that it says it is. It's rated PG-13, and beyond a few shots of young ladies in cheer outfits, there's nothing remotely objectionable here. That would be fine if it were a family film. But it's being marketed as a sexy teen comedy.

Fired Up! promises guilty pleasure, but has all the edge of a bowling ball. It doesn't bring anything new or engaging to the genre, just playing connect-the-dots with a standard formula that wasn't very interesting to begin with. The film doesn't take any risks, which is ironic since "You have to risk it to get the biscuit" is the movie's self-proclaimed message. Apparently, Fired Up! just wasn't very hungry.