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Teenagers getting their rah-rahs out

I didn't half-mind Fired Up, but half a mind is more than it deserves. It's Wedding Crashers with high school seniors and bras and panties, as opposed to Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson and copious toplessness.

In "Fired Up" (from left): Hayley Marie Norman, Sarah Roemer, Eric Christian Olsen, Margo Harshman, Nicholas D'Agosto, Danneel Harris.
In "Fired Up" (from left): Hayley Marie Norman, Sarah Roemer, Eric Christian Olsen, Margo Harshman, Nicholas D'Agosto, Danneel Harris.Read more

I didn't half-mind Fired Up, but half a mind is more than it deserves. It's Wedding Crashers with high school seniors and bras and panties, as opposed to Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson and copious toplessness.

Now and then, though, somebody says something funny. "You really want these strong-jawed philanderers on your squad?" fires the cheerleading camp commandant played by John Michael Higgins. Was it the line, or the ringing intensity of Higgins' delivery, that sold it?

Elsewhere, the dialogue includes references to Alvin Ailey, Nathan Lane, the Jonas Brothers, anthropologist Louis Leakey, and Hamlet 2. You certainly can't say the same about Bring It On, which figures in another effective micro-moment - little here works for a full moment - wherein hundreds of cheerleaders recite the dialogue while watching an outdoor screening of the Kirsten Dunst cheerleading spectacular.

Now, let's have a discussion of the narrative. Two vaguely unsympathetic hotshots played by Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen duck football camp in order to join the overwhelmingly female cheerleading squad. Can you imagine the possibilities? Well, then, you're halfway to becoming a screenwriter!

Cheer camp, they learn, is a rolling meadow of pliable teen nubility. While the campus we see is supposed to be a place called Southeastern Illinois University, we're strictly in Southern California fantasy land.

The sincere one, Shawn (D'Agosto, from Rocket Science, a pretty good actor), falls in love with the squad leader (Sarah Roemer, from Disturbia). The less sincere one, Nick (Olsen, who strains to amuse, and whose Owen Wilson impersonation keeps morphing into Jim Carrey), cooks up the cheerleading scam so he and his pal can "hook up like maniacs." But he, too, develops a crush for one special hottie, the coach's wife, played by Molly Sims. She's just north of 30.

"Just the way I like 'em," he says. "Ancient and regretful."

Director Will Gluck is a first-time feature filmmaker, and he directs like a producer who thought it would be fun to try directing. The script is credited to "Freedom Jones," and it's a patch-up job - lamely raunchy most of the time, entertainingly strange in some of its riffs - developed by one of the producers, Matthew Gross, a friend of one of the other producers, Peter Jaysen, who is responsible for the Maxim film label. Jaysen produced the TV specials Maxim Hot 100 and Maxim's Most Awesome.

I'm not sure why the film's collaborators went the PG-13 route, except to ensure that whatever Fired Up makes in its theatrical release, it'll double as an unrated DVD.EndText