THE MOVIE PAGES presents SARAH ROEMER & ERIC CHRISTIAN OLSEN IN FIRED UP! firedup.htm

What Do The Critics Say?

"As long as you're willing to suspend your disbelief and check your brain at the door, you'll find Fired Up! to be a zany and mindlessly entertaining laugh riot."
Avi Offer NYC MOVIE GURU
"Fired Up! is the teen sex comedy done right. It's fresh, it's funny, and you won't feel like you need a shower after watching it."
Daniel M Kimmel WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE
"Call me crazy, but as a red-blooded American male, I enjoy watching hot girls in skimpy outfits jump around on the movie screen."
Kevin Carr 7M MOVIES
"A harmless teen comedy with more enthusiasm than cinematic merit, Fired Up! combines silliness, low-brow humour, romance and cheerleading acrobatics in its formulaic and predictable arsenal."
Louise Keller URBAN CINEFILE
"Bikini-clad babes and sniggering humor abound in the teen sex comedy Fired Up!, but so do some other things: namely a charming cast, glimmers of intelligence and a sweetly youthful spirit."
Rafer Guzman NEWSDAY
"As horny-teen comedies go, this one is surprisingly and consistently funny. A blend of manic energy and hyperarticulate wit, mixing intellect and wordplay with low comedy."
Marshall Fine HOLLYWOOD & FINE
"There isn't anything special here, but "Fired Up!" is still a lot more fun than the adult romantic comedies Hollywood has trotted out so far this year."
Cole Smithey COLESMITHEY.COM

"Just about what you'd expect, only maybe a little more smutty, 'Fire Up!' is sort of a lesser, junior version of Wedding Crashers combined with Bring It On."
Linda Cook QUAD CITY TIMES
"The idea may be dusty: Wedding Crashers on the football field, but the delivery is fresh."
Liz Braun JAM! MOVIES
"One of the most blatantly sexist and homophobic comedies in some time."
Edward Douglas COMING SOON
"It might not be original, but Fired Up! makes you laugh."
Willie Waffle WAFFLEMOVIES
"Nicholas D'Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen make a hilarious pair; If you're under the age of 25 you’ll like it."
Patrick Parker PREMIERE MAGAZINE
"F.U. stands for funny. An outrageous sex-obsessed teen comedy that's something to cheer about: especially if you're 16."
Pete Hammond HOLLYWOOD.COM
"It may be as dumb as you'd expect from this team, but Fired Up is still the best 'dumb cheerleader' comedy since Bring It On."
Roger Moore ORLANDO SENTINEL
"Fired Up delivers consistent laughs, and it treats its female characters (and even its gay ones) with enough dignity that you won't hate yourself in the morning."
Alonso Duralde MSNBC

The Inside Story Rough and ready football players attending cheerleading camp? Sounds as likely as a cheer champion without school spirit, but the funny of "Fired Up!" was actually inspired by real-life experiences. While in high school, producer Matthew Gross and best friend Phil Needleman decided to broaden their dating pool by attending their high school cheer camp. Where better, they thought, to meet beautiful young girls with very few guys as competition? "It was actually Phil’s idea," says Gross. "A girl on our high school squad mentioned to Phil it would be great to have guys on the squad, so he asked if I’d like to join the squad with him. thought he was nuts until he mentioned going to cheer camp with a thousand girls: genius! I told him I was in. We were only thinking about the cheerleaders. The part we didn’t realize was that we were going to have to cheer." And what was their favourite part of cheerleading camp? "The morning stretches were my favorite part of the day," says Needleman. "It’s like you never saw anything in your life. We would stand back and stretch." Stretch what? "Our eyeballs," says Gross. "We’d stretch our eyeballs." All was going well until the girls said, "You didn’t come just to camp with a thousand girls, did you?" How did they get out of that jam? They told the girls, "No, we’re serious about this: we live to cheer." And when they returned back to school life? "When we came back to school there was this big pep really, and we were backstage before the curtain went up, and I just remember this feeling in the pit of my stomach," says Gross. "People didn’t know exactly how to act," says Needleman. "The student body didn’t get the idea." "I was getting in fights every day at school and ending up in the principal’s office," says Gross. Finally they had to admit, "It’s not working out for us." Though the experience didn’t lead to a lifelong love of cheering, with great foresight Gross's mother, veteran producer Marcy Gross ("Across the Universe"), told her son to take lots of notes and photos at cheer camp. At the time she "thought it would make a good film." Cheering didn’t work out, but years later that idea for a dudes at cheercamp film is a fully-realized movie. "The idea always stayed with me," says Matthew Gross. "I laid out the story and partnered with my friend, Maxim’s Peter Jaysen, because I felt the story was perfect for Maxim’s demographic and audience. The first place we went with it was Screen Gems." Will Gluck, a veteran of television comedy was tapped for the Directors job. "Will is someone who has really strong opinions and choices, and they tend to be right on the mark," says Jaysen ("Hail Sid Caesar! The Golden Age of Comedy"). "He has a terrific sense of timing and comedy, and a great confidence that the actors really thrive on." To play Fired Up’s best friends, the filmmakers cast handsome upand coming actors Nicholas D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen as lead characters Shawn (the character based on producer Gross) and Nick, respectively. "We’re very fortunate to have Nick and Eric as our leading men," says Gross. "They have such camaraderie, they have unbelievable chemistry: you can’t believe they haven’t been friends their whole lives. The film relies upon that chemistry and on the friendship of these two characters." "We play a couple of guys who love women, and they also happen to be great football players for their high school team," says D'Agosto ("Rocket Science"). "That in itself was a glorious thing for me to have the opportunity to play. In reality that couldn’t be further from the truth, so it was great to do football scenes where we were made to look really athletically gifted!"

D’Agosto enjoyed the male duo dynamic that came from working with Olsen. "We had a few weeks of cheer camp before filming: you’ll bond in the middle of that," he joked. "Eric and I had a really good time. We have two very different energies, but a similar idea of the kind of fun we wanted to have. He’s great at making people laugh and cracking jokes out of nowhere: lots of improvisation and just a real free spirit. It’s wonderful to have somebody like that." "Nick is the catalyst for all of the bad decision-making," says Olsen ("Eagle Eye"). "The wonderful thing about Nick is that he has this confidence that’s totally unfounded. His perspective is zero, but he believes in it so much he convinces Shawn to do all of these crazy things." Of working with D’Agosto, Olsen echoes D’Agosto’s great partner praise. "Nick has a great ability to adapt and improv in the moment," he says, "and I think that’s where you find gold, especially in a buddy comedy. Instead of two intersecting monologues, we were able to play off each other and have a true conversation in a scene." Sarah Roemer was cast as Carly, the head cheerleader who is very suspicious of Nick and Shawn’s reasons for attending cheer camp. "Sarah is a great 'girl-next-door', yet she has a kind of unattainable quality," says Gluck (TV'S "Grosse Pointe"). "Guys will watch the movie and say, 'I could get that girl.' No, you couldn’t, but you think you could. Sarah is very talented and when Shawn falls for Carly, much to his surprise, he realizes he’s found a smart, challenging and funny romantic interest, rather than a potential conquest." "My character does not really accept the idea of the boys coming to cheer camp," says Roemer ("Disturbia"), "because she sees right through them. She knows exactly why they’re going, and she frowns upon it, because she takes the cheerleading very seriously." Fired Up also features a wealth of top acting talents in key supporting roles, including John Michael Higgins ("Evan Almighty") as the cheer camp’s Coach Keith and Molly Sims ("Starsky & Hutch") as his wife, Diora, the camp’s lead counselor. Higgins kept the cast and crew laughing with his portrayal of a lifelong cheerleader with Sansabelt pants exhorting his charges to "feel the fire within" as they performed their routines. "Coach Keith is a man who has a great deal of energy: a lot more energy than I have," notes Higgins. "He was born cheering: his mother swears the first thing he did with his little baby hands was spirit fingers." And Keith created a real milestone later in life? "Keith was the first male cheerleader to ever go to nationals," Higgins revealed. "He’s spent his whole life thinking about cheering and absolutely nothing else. When you’re like that, you’re an outcast and don’t even know it." As camp director, Coach Keith has to demonstrate a cheer to his charges, so Higgins had to prepare and learn some moves. "In high school, the purpose of a cheer uniform was to imagine its absence," he says. "I try not to prepare for anything. It’s always a mistake and takes time out of my busy sitting-around schedule, which is packed. They sent choreographers over, but they couldn’t catch me at first. They finally tackled me and taught me the cheer. I did the cheer; it went fine. I get home: can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t breathe." Lying facedown on the dining room floor, Higgins called to his wife, "Honey, drag me into the kitchen. I’m starving." His wife Margaret, evidently showed him no sympathy, responding to his plea with, "You could do a few days without eating." I couldn’t move for three days.And how about those six or seven leaps at the end of 'The Fire Within' routine?

"I knew, airborne in the third leap, that this was the end of a pretty good run for me. I’ve been an actor since I was ten years old, and while I was in the air I looked around and time froze," Higgins remembers. "I surveyed the blasted moonscape that was my career and just saw a smoking ruin. It was a historical moment for me. By the time I got to the sixth leap, it was sheer dada-ism. My thoughts were opaque." And was it true he now had a new understanding of the word 'pain'? "As far as I’m concerned, 'The Fire Within' involves destroying every muscle in your body. All of them: not just the hamstrings, the ones you’d expect, but the muscles that move the little cilia in your ears, the muscles that allow you to flare your nostrils. All of them: toasted." Molly Sims plays Coach Keith’s wife, Diora. She runs the cheer camp with her husband. Simms ("The Benchwarmers") was able to draw on past experience for her role. "I was a cheerleader in my sophomore and junior years. I didn’t make it my freshman year. Then after a couple years I didn’t try out my senior year. But I loved it at the time. The girls take it very seriously. I look back at my days of cheering and I marvel at how cut-throat it was and how much it meant to me at the time." Of her co-star, Sims says, "John Michael Higgins is a phenomenal actor, and one of the funniest men I’ve ever worked with! Hysterical, to the point where I had to dig my fingers into my hands trying not to break character in mid-scene." Rounding out the cast are the Ford High School Tigers cheer squad members: Margo Harshman ("College Road Trip") as Sylvia, a relative introvert who is prone to occasional out of context utterances; Hayley Marie Norman ("Trailer Park of Terror") as Angela, the most athletic of the Tigers; and Danneel Harris ("Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay") as Bianca, who develops an attraction to an unlikely member of her own squad. Twelve year old Juliette Goglia (Hilary in "Ugly Betty") plays Shawn’s young sister Poppy, a negotiating savant always on the lookout for a financial opportunity. Edie McClurg ("Home on the Range" & "Cars") plays the Tigers cheerleading coach Ms Klingerhoff, while 2001 Alan J Pakula Award winner Philip Baker Hall ("The Contender") plays the Tigers football Coach Byrnes. On the other side of the cheer mat is AnnaLynne McCord ("Nip/Tuck") as Gwyneth, the head cheerleader of the elite (and chock full of 'mean girls') Panthers cheer squad. The Panthers are the Tigers main rivals for top honors at camp. David Walton ("Cracking Up") plays Rick, Carly’s pompous boyfriend, a pre-med student who insists on being called "Dr Rick". Olsen and D’Agosto received quite a surprise when they were handed the final script. It contained a nude scene. "It wasn’t in the script when we signed up for the movie," Olsen said. "As soon as we finished our deals, they wrote this scene where we’re running around naked, doing cheers. It took about nine hours to shoot, it was very cold. And it is very funny!" The two actors had to rely on each other for proper pompom placement, as they performed the cheer 'al dente'. "“We had to do a two hundred yard sprint, then begin doing this cheer for Coach Keith," D’Agosto explained. "Eric and I looked at each other at the beginning, and we had this moment where we had to accept the fact that we’d be outside, naked all night, dancing in front of everyone. It was hilarious!" And here's an interesting piece of trivia: The first cheerleader in history was actually a guy named Johnny Campbell who, on November 2nd 1898, led the first cheerleaders (all male) at a Minnesota football game. Women didn’t join the sport until the 1920s. Synopsis

Shawn and Nick are top scorers on the Ford High School football team:both on and off the field. As adept with a ball as they are with the ladies, these studs have conquered the school’s hotties and are approaching girl boredom as they’re faced with another scorching stint at summer football camp. But then they overhear the girls talking about cheerleading camp, and Nick hatches a scheme for them to join up. instead of running around in the sweltering heat with a bunch of sweaty guys, they’ll be awash in a sea of gorgeous, athletic young women who can all do back flips and the splits. Shawn and Nick trade their footballs for pom-poms and prepare to get fired up! At first their plan works like a dream: cheer camp becomes a blur of lips, lifts, and launches as the cheerleaders succumb to the guys’ charms one after another. But when it becomes clear that the addition of the guys has given their school’s historically awful and loser cheer squad a chance at success, the guys’ participation becomes more than a lark.

The Verdict

"There's laughs galore in this very funny tale of two good-looking high school football jocks who skip a summer football camp by opting into a cheerleaders camp. Now anyone with a sense of humour can see that there are limitless opportunities for comedy in a film that focusses on two hot guys and three hundred spunky cheerleaders crammed into the confines of a summer camp. The tagline: "Two Guys. Three Hundred cheerleaders. You do the math", summs up "Fired Up!", perfectly. Especially when our conniving, artful jocks find out they are the only 'straight' guys in camp. The possibilities are limitless and this film exploits them at every opportunity, producing a barrage of clever one-liners and moments that are truly memorable, including a segment involving the obligitory skinny dipping which lands the guys in a very awark, but absolutely hilarious situation. Of course, it doesn't require an Albert Einstien IQ (which by the way was never tested, but is believed to be 160+) to work it out that the guys will get 'sprung' sooner or later. It's what the audience hangs out for. And here's a special note: don't get up and leave at films end because there are some great out-takes as the credits run. So when it comes to an audience segment who are the filmmakers aiming to attract. Obviously the biggest segment they have in their sights is teenagers and young adults. Don't let that put you off if you are on the 'mature side' of twenty-five. Unless of course you're a damp squib, a homaphobic, an out and out prude or you have no sense of humour at all. "Fired Up!" is no Oscar contender but as far as teen flicks and comedies go, it's pretty good fare. Recommended to those with a broad sense of humour. Don't let the teenagers have all the fun! 3 1/2 STARS." Who Plays Who?

Nicholas D'Agosto
Eric Christian Olsen
Sarah Roemer
Molly Sims
Danneel Harris
David Walton
Adhir Kalyan
AnnaLynne McCord
Juliette Goglia
Philip Baker Hall
John Michael Higgins
Smith Cho
Margo Harshman
Hayley Marie Norman
Jake Sandvig
Nicole Tubiola
Collins Pennie
Edie McClurg
Michael Blaiklock
James Earl
Keeshan Giles
Alan Ritchson

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Shawn Colfax
Nick Brady
Carly
Diora
Bianca
Dr Rick
Brewster
Gwyneth
Poppy
Coach Byrnes
Coach Keith
Beth
Sylvia
Angela
Downey
Marcy
Adam
Ms Klingerhoff
Mookie
Turk
Kyle
Bruce

The Production Team

Director
Written by
Producers
Original Music
Cinematography
Film Editor
Casting
Production Designer
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Costume Designer

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Will Gluck
Freedom Jones
Matthew Gross/Peter Jaysen/Charles Weinstock
Richard Gibbs
Thomas E Ackerman
Tracey Wadmore-Smith
Lisa Miller
Marcia Hinds
Bo Johnson
Karen Agresti
Mynka Draper