Film / Fired Up!

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Fired Up! is a 2009 teen sex comedy film directed by Will Gluck in his directorial debut; he also wrote the film under the pseudonym Freedom Jones.

The film is about two popular football stars, Shawn Colfax (Nicholas D'Agosto) and Nick Brady (Eric Christian Olsen), who decide to get out of football camp and into a cheerleading squad after overhearing how the squad's cheering camp has 300 girls, with plans to hook up with as many girls as they can and leave before the camp-end competition.

However, after one of them falls for the squad captain Carly Davidson (Sarah Roemer) and the other for a camp instructor Diora (Molly Sims), they decide to stay but get caught and expelled, and have to find a way to get back into the camp.

Fired Up! provides examples of:

• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Shawn and Eric's desire for them over their trashy, masculine football teammates kicks off the plot.
• Alpha Bitch: A whole team of them in fact (the Panthers) constantly revel in their top status and how much worse off their rivals look
• Ambiguously Gay: Nick has his strange moments like his knowledge of recipes, his romantic writing, his squickily shocking phrases about how straight he is. Shawn and Straight Gay Downey expect him to come out.
• Becoming the Mask: Sean and Nick pose as cheerleading enthusiasts to meet more girls and actually do find out that they enjoy cheerleading.
• Catchphrase:
  • Silvya often repeats, "I'm just saying."
  • Shawn's "You've gotta risk it to get the biscuit."
• Character Development: The boys change from players to sensitive, caring friends to the girls and even romantic suitors during the camp. If they weren't just pretending to be jerks all along.
• Chekhov's Skill: The Fountain of Troy.
• Clingy Costume: The mascots have really tight costumes and they never take off them. Even when they're skinny dipping.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Cluster S-Bomb. The coach really likes the word "shit". Nick and Shawn made a game out of trying to guess how many times he can say it in one conversation.
• Deadpan Snarker: Anyone sho doesn't want to experience biting and sarcastic quips shouldn't talk with Poppy if they can avoid it.
• Double-Meaning Title: Refers to both the excitement the cheerleaders feel at the camp in getting to perform and to the excitement the two leads feel in being around them in the hopes of peaking romantic interest from any number of them too.
• Evil Wears Black: The Panther squad of Alpha Bitch rivals wear black uniforms.
• Fanservice: Lots and lots of teenage girls wear skimpy cheerleading uniforms and the boys get some shirtless scenes.
• Gratuitous Spanish: The Fountain of Troy is prohibidado. Prohibidabado. Prohibibabo.
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Following the Skinny Dipping, Nick and Shawn use their hands and some pom-poms to cover up when they get caught.
• Hidden Depths: Alpha Bitch Gwyneth is touchy about having gotten plastic surgery after she broke her nose during a riding accident, and during a Dirty Coward rant where she is afraid of being punched, mentions that she doesn't really care about cheerleading and wants to be a paralegal after college.
• Jerk Jock: Every guy who isn't in the cheering camp is an obnoxious athlete, and Shawn and Nick start out this way while going there just to meet girls. It gets hilarious whenever they get caught or told off by one of the coaches.
• Ladykiller in Love: Shawn to Carly.
• Likes Older Women: Nick with Diora, their camp coach's wife. They made-out in the end credits but she had to leave because of her husband was coming.
• Obviously Evil: The Panthers are evil cheerleaders who wear dark clothing, constantly glare and sneer, and march in rigid clique formation. Seriously, they aren't the type of girls you'd want to meet in a dark alley... Satans with pom-poms.
• Opposing Cheerleaders Team: The Panthers.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Bianca is asked to put on some underwear when they get woken up at night after she sleepwalks into Angela's bed.
• Pom-Pom Girl: The whole movie is about cheerleading camp, so lots of cheering, dancing, and pom-poms to go around. Some of the girls are of this nice variety as opposed to the alpha bitchy cheerleaders.
• The Problem with Pen Island: During the Fired Up cheer, most shout the letters "F U". Shawn and Nick are apparently the only ones to notice the problem.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Averted. The Tigers get nineteenth place and fail to even qualify for the next level of cheering competitions (let alone win that), but they are happy because it's ten places better than last year.
• Secret Diary: Nick has been writing a diary and it's full of romantic poetry, mostly about the older Diora.
• Serious Business: Cheerleading. Specially for Adam.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The football coach, whose favorite word is "shit".
• Shout-Out: Carly's Jerkass boyfriend makes ones to Animal House and Meet the Parents (2000).
• Skinny Dipping: Nick and Shawn get a cheerleading team from another school to practice cheers in the pond in their underwear with them (with at least some of the girls seeing through it but one wanting to score with Nick while another forms a platonic friendship with Shawn) followed by the inevitable Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen (at the hands of woodland animals rather than people), with Shawn and Nick the victims.
• Straight Gay:
  • Downey is gay but has no mannerisms. He actually got Nick to think he was straight without actively trying to even after touching his butt.
  • Most if not all of the oh-so straight looking Panther guys, if we believe to the girl who said that there were only four straight students in the camp, being three of those Nick, Shawn and Adam.
• The Wildcats: Both The Tigers and The Panthers fit to tropably generic names and mascots for a sports team.
• Training from Hell: Or the closest you're gonna see to this in a cheerleading movie.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Shawn's sister, Poppy, is very mature for her age, constantly references sex or masturbation, and makes complex business deals.
• Verbal Tic: The coach can't stop saying "shit".