THE MOVIE

Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen both star in Fired Up!

Teen comedies. Cheap to make, formulaic, but often successful enough to justify the production costs. Case in point is Fired Up. It cost $US20 million to make, and returned $US18 million at the box office. Oh wait, OK, so this probably isn't the best example, but throw in rental and retail purchases and this movie will likely turn a profit. So what do you get if you blend American Pie and Bring It On? This movie, Fired Up!.

Shawn Colfax (Nicholas D'Agosto) and Nick Brady (Eric Christian Olsen), the stars of the Gerald R. Ford High School football team, are dreading the prospect of another summer at football camp. After Nick hatches a scheme for the two to join their schools cheerleaders at cheer camp instead, they find themselves awash in a sea of gorgeous young women. The guys are having the time of their lives until Shawn falls for Carly (Sarah Roemer), the beautiful head cheerleader who is very suspicious of their motives. To win Carly over, the boys must come up with some surprising new moves to prove Shawns intentions before the all-important cheer competition finals.

Yep, it's the bitchy cheerleaders...

From the outset this is such a predictable movie. You know what's going to happen. Two guys, hundreds of single girls, one cheer team that is the 'best' and of course full of bitches, an underdog team, lost clothing when the boys go skinny dipping. Of course you can predict every outcome. Then of course you get the cheerleading move, the "Fountain of Troy", that was only performed at the World Championships and is 'too hard' for the teams at this championship to perform - right? Sooo predictable.

Still the lead characters are entertaining in a Dude, Where's my Car? styled buddy way. There are some entertaining moments such as when the cheerleaders are watching Bring It On, when the guys perform some naked cheerleading, and a drunken party filled with football players. Beyond that, for the guys, there are hundreds of hot cheerleaders on show! (Sadly for some there is only one topless women in the whole movie, and even then it's only in the unrated movie. This isn't American Pie, that's for sure).

This disc contains both the 90 minute theatrical version as well as the unrated extended version which adds in an additional, wait for it, one minute of footage! While this is a teen comedy it isn't overly raunchy, even the unrated version only gets a M rating in Australia so don't expect anything too vulgar. Interestingly the disc also shows a small mark on the screen when the added scenes, or should that be moments, are on-screen so you can identify them.

...and the nice cheerleading team.

VIDEO
Encoded at 1.85:1 as per the original theatrical presentation using the AVC MPEG-4 codec this is a solid transfer with a bitrate that tends to hover around the 25-28Mbps mark for the most part. The image is sharp, and colours brilliant. At times through I felt the image was a little washed out and lacking some detail in darker scenes, but overall this is still an impressive presentation which shows off the benefits of Blu-Ray over DVD.

AUDIO
Fired Up comes to Blu-Ray with Sony's usual Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (24-bit) audio track. The soundtrack on this disc isn't what you would call the most lively of experiences. There are a few moments of lively music, and of course there are plenty of crowd effects when the teams compete, but beyond that the majority of the movie is dialogue based, and very front heavy.

Other audio tracks on this disc includes a German Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track and also a Spanish Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track. Both are encoded with 16-bit audio (compared to 24-bit for the English track) however given the nature of the film they are pretty close to the English audio. Subtitles are provided in English, English SDH, German, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Turkish.

Even Molly Sims was dragged into this movie.

EXTRAS
While not overly loaded there are quite a few extras on this disc worth your time if you liked the movie.

Commentary with Director Will Gluck, Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen: A rather entertaining commentary with the director and two stars of the movie. Quite lively, with the three having a good rapport together.

This is Not a Cheerleading Movie: The Making of Fired Up! (15:37/HD): It's not long and comes across as a bit of an EPK, but there are some entertaining moments in this featurette which shows on-set footage, and includes interviews with cast and crew about many of the aspects of making this cheerleading movie.

Double Duty (6:29/HD): This featurette looks at going from NFL boot camp, to the Cheerleading boot camp. Includes plenty of rehearsal footage and interviews with the two stars.

The girls in Fired Up! are pretty hot.

Gag Reel - Uncensored Version (8:05): Here was have a series of goofing around on set, and fluffed lines. Why is it that when there is more swearing in the first 30 seconds of this extra then the whole movie. Still some funny stuff here, especially with the peacocks.

Fired Up! Press Junket - Hour 12 (1:50): A pointless 'fake' interview meltdown. Pointless, and plenty of swearing.

Trailers (7:18/HD): Trailers for "Blu-Ray is High Definition", 2012, Angels & Demons and The House Bunny. The question has to be asked; Why not even include the trailer for this movie though?

OVERALL
Fired Up! is a teen comedy, but despite the "unrated" tag is about as tame as they get. Well, OK there are some dirty words, but that's about it. Anyway it's a pretty average movie, given a solid presentation on Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures. Probably only a rental at best.

Review By: Dave Warner

THE MOVIE	6/10
THE VIDEO	7/10
THE AUDIO	8/10
THE EXTRAS	4/10
OVERALL	6/10