fired up movie review

YEARS-THE MUSIC & MYTH OF TOM WAITS" BY Jay S. Jacobs

If you have been spending sleepless nights wondering what would happen if the Bring It On movies were written by someone who could� you know, actually write� then congratulations, your long personal nightmare is finally over. 

The rest of us will meet the news with a collective shrug of, �yeah, whatever,� but still be secure in the knowledge that if we ever need a snappy, clever cheerleader camp movie, we now do have a slightly better option. 

The movie is the film debut of director Will Gluck, who was the mind behind the short-lived but quirky FOX sitcom The Loop.   Gluck may very well have written the film as well � the credited screenwriter is �Freedom Jones� which sounds a whole lot like an alias.

Fired Up! is about a pair of horn-dog high school jocks who decide to skip football camp to go to a cheerleading camp � where they figure they will be the only straight guys amongst hundreds of hot girls.  These high school guys are played by Gluck�s Loop star Eric Christian Olsen (who is in his early 30s) and former Heroes regular Nick D�Agostino (late 20s) � both a little too old for the roles, but they seem to have immature down well enough (particularly Olsen).

Their evil plan is working perfectly � both of the guys are scoring left and right � when Shawn (D�Agostino) falls for Carly, the one cheerleader who seems to see through all their bull (played by Sarah Roemer of Disturbia. )  Making things worse, she has a complete asshole of an older boyfriend who cheats on her (David Walton).  Suddenly, it is about love for Shawn, not sex. 

Besides, the guys suddenly realize that cheerleading is hard, important work� just as important as football.  Plus, the cheerleaders smell better than the football players . Thus the guys have to decide if they will stick around for the big cheer-off or meet up with their football buddies at the big summer blowout bash at the summer house of one of their teammate�s parents. 

If that plotline sounds a little familiar� congratulations, you�ve seen a teen sex comedy in the last thirty years. 

However, if the plot of Fired Up! is clich�d, threadbare and a little dumb (and it most certainly is), the nice surprise is that the dialogue is often snappy, smart, current and very funny.  It�s almost like �Freedom Jones� knew how stupid the whole genre was and he decided to deconstruct it from the inside.  There is even a scene where the entire camp views the first Bring It On movie and yells out the bad dialogue in time with the film � as if it were a midnight movie like Rocky Horror Picture Show.  

The filmmakers of Fired Up! may very well be trying to be trying to go the Rocky Horror route � take a stupid, bad old genre and then camp it up smartly � laughing with it and at it at the same time.  They are not completely successful, they commit to the plot to an extent that they can�t completely mock it.  Therefore Fired Up! comes off as a weird hybrid � is it a teen sex comedy or a parody of a teen sex comedy?  If the filmmakers can�t seem to decide, how can we?  

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Cop yright � 2009     PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 8, 2009.

Fired Up Review

10 Jul 2009

It’s a sad day when the best thing you can say about a comedy is that it’s not as bad as the ____ Movie franchise, but that’s where we are with this limp entry into the ‘high schoolers getting laid’ genre. Here, they’re not even nerds; two footballers — both, like, supercute (read: smug bastards) — decide that they’d rather shag girls than endure their football camp, so go to cheerleading classes instead.

You can count on one hand the decent gags; the rest is down to either a low kill-rate during the scripting process or bad timing in the editing suite (they can’t even get the evil Purple Cobra-like rivals right), leaving a charmless, witless, lumbering mess.

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Movie Review: Fired Up! (2009)

By Brad Brevet

I went into Fired Up! second guessing the premise from the outset. How could a PG-13 raunchy teen sex comedy be any good? I forgot a PG-13 rating pretty much means the only two things not allowed are nudity and an overt number of uses of the F-word. Fired Up! takes advantage of all the PG-13 loop holes, avoids using even one f-bomb and on top of that actually delivers enough comedy to keep you entertained throughout. I’m as shocked by all of this as you may be, but Fired Up! actually makes for a decent comedic distraction.

The story centers on Shawn and Nick (Nicholas D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen), a pair of football jocks who don’t want to go to this year’s football camp and decide to ditch, join the cheerleading squad and spend three weeks surrounded by cheerleaders. Of course the overall goal is to sleep with as many of them as possible and in any film of this sort the original goal is soon trumped by the fact they find themselves actually enjoying the camaraderie of being on the cheer team as well as one of them soon falls in love with cheer team captain Carly, played by Disturbia co-star Sarah Roemer.

Fired Up! isn’t without all the typical clichés with the inevitable misunderstanding mucking up the works at the end before things get worked out and the guy eventually gets the girl, but the fact this film is rated PG-13 may have actually worked in its favor in its execution. Anonymous screenwriting team labeled as Freedom Jones had to be a bit more subtle with the sex jokes and the film played as if a lot of improvisational moments from the shoot were kept for the final cut.

As the leads D’Agosto and Olsen brought a satisfying balance of aloofness, immaturity, sincerity and understanding to their characters that no matter how silly and unbelievable the plot got they never took it too far and their characters even occasionally recognize the stupidity of it all. The film itself even manages to take it a step further underscoring the misunderstanding in the film by featuring the shamed boys on a bus ride home while Kate Nash’s “Dickhead” ( listen here ) plays in the background with lyrics such as “Why you being a dickhead for? / Stop being a dickhead.” That alone deserves a back pat.

I also found some entertainment value in the subtleties surrounding the cheer squad’s closet lesbian (Danneel Harris) who has a crush on Angela played by Hayley Marie Norman. I still wonder how many people in my audience actually caught her rubbing her face on Norman’s posterior after she fell during a cheer trick in practice, but by the end of the film you would have to be asleep to miss the handful of ass she is taking home with her. For as much as these films love to beat the audience over the head with their jokes, and Fired Up! is no exception, there are a few moments such as these that make this one just a skosh better.

With the good also comes the bad as sometimes-funny-sometimes-annoying John Michael Higgins plays the cheer camp instructor with enough gusto that the joke goes on so long it eventually forces a chuckle, but by the end you wish he would just go away. Also David Walton as Dr. Rick, Carly’s college-age boyfriend, is far more annoying than he is funny, and annoying to the point you would never even want to date a girl that was able to stand his presence for more than 5 minutes, let alone begin pursuing her as any man with an ounce of charisma outshines the douche that is Dr. Rick.

On a whole, the good outweighs the bad in Fired Up! , much to my surprise and satisfaction. You can never go into a film like this expecting too much because it will always manage to disappoint, but if you go into them expecting the same-old same-old they can surprise you every so often. This film is by no means a revelation, but I at least had a good time while I watched it, which is all you can really ask for from a film of this ilk.

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They May Have Been Gone, But They’re Still Classic

By isa barnett.

• Mar 8, 2009

Fired Up! (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

Updated: Mar 15, 2023

FIRED UP! (2009)

Starring Nicholas D’Agostino, Eric Christian Olsen, Sarah Roemer, Molly Sims, David Walton, Philip Baker Hall, John Michael Higgins, Danneel Harris, Hayley Marie Norman, AnnaLynne McCord, Adhir Kalyan, Juliette Goglia, Smith Cho, Margo Harshman, Jake Sandvig, Francia Raisa and Edie McClurg.

Screenplay by Freedom Jones.

Directed by Will Gluck.

Distributed by Screen Gems.  90 minutes.  Rated PG-13.

If you have been spending sleepless nights wondering what would happen if the  Bring It On  movies were written by someone who could… you know, actually write… then congratulations, your long personal nightmare is finally over.

The rest of us will meet the news with a collective shrug of, “yeah, whatever,” but still be secure in the knowledge that if we ever need a snappy, clever cheerleader camp movie, we now do have a slightly better option.

The movie is the film debut of director Will Gluck, who was the mind behind the short-lived but quirky FOX sitcom  The Loop.   Gluck may very well have written the film as well – the credited screenwriter is “Freedom Jones” which sounds a whole lot like an alias.

Fired Up!  is about a pair of horn-dog high school jocks who decide to skip football camp to go to a cheerleading camp – where they figure they will be the only straight guys amongst hundreds of hot girls.  These high school guys are played by Gluck’s  Loop  star Eric Christian Olsen (who is in his early 30s) and former  Heroes  regular Nick D’Agostino (late 20s) – both a little too old for the roles, but they seem to have immature down well enough (particularly Olsen).

Their evil plan is working perfectly – both of the guys are scoring left and right – when Shawn (D’Agostino) falls for Carly, the one cheerleader who seems to see through all their bull (played by Sarah Roemer of  Disturbia. )  Making things worse, she has a complete asshole of an older boyfriend who cheats on her (David Walton).  Suddenly, it is about love for Shawn, not sex.

Besides, the guys suddenly realize that cheerleading is hard, important work… just as important as football.  Plus, the cheerleaders smell better than the football players. Thus the guys have to decide if they will stick around for the big cheer-off or meet up with their football buddies at the big summer blowout bash at the summer house of one of their teammate’s parents.

If that plotline sounds a little familiar… congratulations, you’ve seen a teen sex comedy in the last thirty years.

However, if the plot of  Fired Up!  is clichéd, threadbare and a little dumb (and it most certainly is), the nice surprise is that the dialogue is often snappy, smart, current and very funny.  It’s almost like “Freedom Jones” knew how stupid the whole genre was and he decided to deconstruct it from the inside.  There is even a scene where the entire camp views the first  Bring It On  movie and yells out the bad dialogue in time with the film – as if it were a midnight movie like  Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The filmmakers of  Fired Up!  may very well be trying to be trying to go the  Rocky Horror  route – take a stupid, bad old genre and then camp it up smartly – laughing with it and at it at the same time.  They are not completely successful; they commit to the plot to an extent that they can’t completely mock it.  Therefore,  Fired Up!  comes off as a weird hybrid – is it a teen sex comedy or a parody of a teen sex comedy?  If the filmmakers can’t seem to decide, how can we?

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2009 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: March 8, 2009.

#HayleyMarieNorman #JulietteGoglia #WillGluck #DavidWalton #EdieMcClurg #EricChristianOlsen #PhilipBakerHall #AnnaLynneMcCord #DanneelHarris #MollySims #AdhirKalyan #FreedomJones #firedup #FranciaRaisa #NicholasDAgostino #BringItOn #cheerleading #SarahRoemer #JohnMichaelHiggins #SmithCho #JakeSandvig #MargoHarshman

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"Teen Sex Comedy"

What You Need To Know:

(PaPaPa, HoHo, B, C, LLL, VV, SS, NN, MMM) Very strong hedonistic, pagan worldview with strong homosexual elements, though one cheerleading squad prays before competition, asking God to help them and “to fix the economy”; 63 obscenities, 25 chants of the abbreviations for “Fired Up” which is to be understood as an obscenity, song with six obscenities, graphic name calling, scatological comments, and 11 profanities; strong violence includes teenager in fistfight, teenagers fall in cheerleading practice, comedic scene of teen falling from balcony and teenager falling in pool unconscious; constant discussion of sex by teenagers, dozens of implied sexual relations among teenagers, implied adultery between underage teenager and female coach, much kissing and heavy petting by teenagers, including lesbian teenagers kissing, lesbian petting, homosexual grabs buttocks of male character, suggested homosexual actions by male coach when hugging male teenager, cheerleading poses which are to represent both homosexual and heterosexual sex acts; rear male nudity, upper male nudity, male characters fully nude but strategically placed pom poms cover private parts, dozens of teenage girls in short shirts, low cut tops and bare midriffs, male and female teen characters strip to underwear and go swimming; teenage drinking and drunkenness; no smoking or illegal drugs; and, lying, deception, no respect for adults or adult coaches, adultery.

More Detail:

FIRED UP! is the story of two high school football players, Shawn and Nick, who decide to skip football camp and join the cheerleading camp in order to meet girls and to have sexual relations. At first, the plan works, and Nick and Shawn meet and have sexual relations with dozens of cheerleaders at the camp. However, Shawn falls for the squad leader from their own school. Meanwhile, Nick continues to try to have sexual relations with the female adult coach, who is married.

Along the way, the boyfriend of the squad leader exposes Nick and Shawn’s real motive for being at camp. They not only must patch things up with their fellow cheerleaders, but also try to win the big cheerleading competition as well.

The movie is a slick, well-made, funny movie with a depraved, abhorrent center. The cast is very endearing, especially Nicholas d’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen as the two football jocks turned cheerleaders. The script is very tight and there are many laughs, even ones that are not sexually based – though those are few and far between. The music drives the story and the directing is well executed.

The fact that the movie is so well made is, in fact, the greatest source of moral danger. The movie’s message is that it’s assumed that teenagers will have multiple sex partners, both heterosexual and homosexual. This cinematic poison is coated with much sugar, and a willing teenage audience will swallow this pagan message readily.

To keep the PG-13 rating, the sexual scenes are all implied and not depicted, though there is no question as to what was to have taken place. There are literally dozens of such “hook ups” and while there is supposed to be a moral high road in that Shawn loses interest in the casual sex once he meets Carly, it is implied and assumed that he and Carly will be sexually active with each other.

There’s much foul language, but again, there are no “f” words to keep the movie from getting an R rating. Instead of overt nude scenes, they are cleverly staged with male characters having pom poms displayed strategically.

This is a movie that is very overt with its immoral agenda, but very well made, which may draw many teens to the box office. Media-wise parents and teenagers will understand this pagan movie for what it is and want to avoid it.

It is movies like FIRED UP! that have led to the huge surges in teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among youths aged 12 to 24. If you are at all outraged about the recent stories of a single mother on welfare in California giving birth to eight test-tube babies and the 13-year-old boy in England becoming a father, then you will help MOVIEGUIDE® and your local community make sure that movies like FIRED UP! fail financially because not many people go to see them. As many studies have shown, pre-marital sex leads to poverty, violent crime, divorce, domestic abuse, and disease, and entertainment programming that depicts such immorality encourages younger viewers to engage in it.

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Short takes

Not suitable under 13; parental guidance to 14 (sexual references and behaviour, teenage alcohol use, coarse language)

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details of classification and consumer advice lines for Fired Up
• a review of Fired Up completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 23 April 2012 .

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie’s message

A synopsis of the story

High-school buddies Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olson) decide that rather attending the annual summer football camp, they will join the school’s cheerleaders team the “Tigers”. They enlist the aid of Shawn’s sister Poppy (Juliette Goglia) to teach them some basic cheerleading moves and, after a staged display of their newly acquired skills, make it on to the team. However, the head cheerleader Carly (Sarah Roemer) mistrusts the pair, rightly believing them to be there for only one reason: scoring girls. At cheerleaders camp, Shawn and Nick have no trouble winning the affections of the cheerleaders and make many conquests. While Nick lusts after the camp coach’s wife Diora (Molly Sims), Shawn finds himself becoming seriously attracted to Carly, who after some initial hesitation begins to respond to Shawn. Unfortunately for Shawn, Carly’s boyfriend, a pre-med student, who calls himself Dr. Rick (David Walton) arrives on the scene, making it clear that he wants Shawn to stay away from Carly. Dr. Rick steals Nick’s diary which details Shawn and Nick’s plans to abandon cheerleader camp once they have had their fill of cheerleaders and uses the diary to expose them. Carly, who is furious with Shawn for betraying her and the team, orders both Shawn and Nick to leave immediately. Shawn and Nick then have to work hard to get back into the squad.

Themes info

Children and adolescents may react adversely at different ages to themes of crime, suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, death, serious illness, family breakdown, death or separation from a parent, animal distress or cruelty to animals, children as victims, natural disasters and racism. Occasionally reviews may also signal themes that some parents may simply wish to know about.

High school football; cheerleaders; teenage sexual behaviour.

Use of violence info

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

Fired Up contains some slapstick violence and accidental harm. Examples include:

• A football coach yells at Shawn and Nick in a hostile and threatening manner; using a number of obscenities.
• At a beach party a teenage boy falls into a camp fire and his sleeve catches on fire. A second boy tackles the boy to the ground and puts out his burning sleeve. Both boys appear uninjured. 
• A cheerleader is thrown high into the air and falls heavily onto the ground. She is uninjured.
• Nick, in jest, hits Shawn over the head several times with a heavy book.
• A cheerleader says that she wants to “cut” a cheerleader from a rival team.
• A group of teenage boys throw raw hamburger meat at each other during a fight.
• After performing a dangerous manoeuvre called “The Fountain of Troy”, Shawn flips several times and crashes into a pool of shallow water where he floats as if unconscious. He then recovers and stands up, speaking briefly before falling over in the water again. Later Shawn appears to be uninjured by the incident.
• Rick attempts to punch Shawn in the face, but misses and punches Nick in the face, knocking him to the ground. In retaliation, Shawn knocks Rick to the ground by punching him in the face and one of the cheerleaders then kicks Rick in the head. Rick appears to be unconscious.
• A cheerleader punches another cheerleader in the face, knocking her to the ground.

Material that may scare or disturb children

Under five info.

Children under five are most likely to be frightened by scary visual images, such as monsters, physical transformations.

• Nothing further noted.

Aged five to eight info

Children aged five to eight will also be frightened by scary visual images and will also be disturbed by depictions of the death of a parent, a child abandoned or separated from parents, children or animals being hurt or threatened and / or natural disasters.

Aged eight to thirteen info

Children aged eight to thirteen are most likely to be frightened by realistic threats and dangers, violence or threat of violence and / or stories in which children are hurt or threatened.

Product placement

Fired Up parodies product placement in sports but some real products are also displayed, including:

• Burger King

Sexual references

Fired Up contains continuous sexual innuendo, double entendres and crude sexual references. Examples include:

• In reference to being sexually stimulated, we hear a teenage girl say to a boy “I think I’m ready to go off”.
• In reference to going to cheerleader camp, Nick and Shawn make the comments: “three hundred girls who want it”; “three hundred hotties we’re never been with before” and “three hundred honeys on our biscuit”.
• A teenage boy asks another if he is “coming on” to him. He responds that he is “too straight to be gay” providing several examples to prove this.
• A girl tells a boy. “you love every bone in my body, especially yours”
• In reference to a girl’s breasts, we hear a boy say, “Man she’s got nice lumps”
• In reference to contracting STDs, a boy makes a remark about taking another ride to the clinic. 
• Shawn and Nick make a reference to “leaving no girl unturned”.
• A reference is made to the President of the United States as having visited “Titty Bars”.     
• In one scene, Nick approaches Diora and asks her “What are you doing later?” To which Diora responds, “Not you”.
• In reference to the abilities of a cheerleading squad, a teenage boy says to a second teenage boy “They suck”, the second boy responds with “So did she”
• Carla refers to Shawn and Nick as “Heartless boob grabbers”.
• Dr. Rick insinuates that Carla will perform oral sex on him at a restaurant.
• A girl is referred to as, “the dirty blond you were making time with”.
• In reference to having sex with cheerleaders at cheerleading camp, we hear a boy make the comment “…like banging fish in a barrel”.
• A teenage boy says that he likes to be bitten on the “donk be donk”.
• the expression, “My horse is peeing whipped cream”.    
• Shawn’s little sister Poppy asks him if he is in love and then tells him to “stay safe”
• In reference to recognising being gay, a boy says to another, “Closet doors are made out of all sorts of wood.
• The end credits feature bloopers containing partially bleeped out coarse language and crude sexual references. 

Nudity and sexual activity

While Nick and Shawn appear obsessed with engaging in as many sexual escapades as possible, their engagement in sexual acts is implied rather than depicted. The film contains some nudity and brief clothing. Examples include:

• Nick and a girl kiss while on a sofa, after which the girl leads Nick out of the room. Shawn is kissing a second girl on a sofa and the girl removes her top to reveal a camisole underneath. Before the two couples get any further, the fathers of the two girls arrive home unexpectedly and stop the activity.
• Shawn and Nick watch a group of teenage girls performing a cheerleading routine. From where the two boys are standing it appears as if one girl is performing oral sex on a second girl. A second pose depicts one girl with her face nearly resting on the clothed breast of a second girl.
• While travelling on a bus, Carly stumbles and lands on Shawn’s lap with Shawn calling Carly “handsy”. A few seconds later the same thing happens, but this time Carly’s fingers manage to land in Shawn’s mouth.
• At cheerleader camp we see dozens of teenage girls, dressed in tight fitting and brief sportswear.
• A middle aged male coach slaps a teenage boy on his clothed buttocks.
• At the camp Nick and Shawn are seen kissing several different girls and performing stretching exercises with a number of girls in an intimate manner
• several images of two girls kissing each other on the lips                 
• Shawn, Nick and several others go to a lake for a swim. The girls remove their clothing leaving on underwear, with Nick and Shawn doing the same. The third boy removes all of his clothing and stands naked.  We see a rear view of him rotating his hips while the girls, Shawn and Nick look on.
• A girl swims towards Nick, removes her bra underwater, then pulls off Nick’s boxer shorts underwater and kisses him on the lips. Two girls swim towards Shawn and remove his boxer shorts underwater.
• Nick and Shawn’s clothes are stolen, forcing the boys to walk back to their room naked. They run through campus grounds naked, covering their genitals with their hands. They are stopped by a male coach, who asks the boys to perform a cheerleading routine. Shawn and Nick perform the routine naked, using large pom-poms to cover their genitals.
• After Carly kisses her boyfriend Dr. Rick on the lips, we see Dr. Rick wiping his lips with his fingers and then lick them.
• A teenage boy urinates against a tree (seen from behind).
• We see Nick playing with another boy’s string of beads putting them in his mouth. Shawn tells Nick that the beads are the other boy’s sex aids and that the boy is gay.
• Scenes of a girl making sexual advances to another girl
• In the final competition, we see a cheerleading pose that places teenage girls with their crotches in Shawn and Nick’s faces.
• At the start of the film’s end credits Diora approaches Nick and tells him to “lose the clothes”. Diora in her bra and a short skirt lies on top of Nick, who is wearing only his underwear, they kiss and we hear Diora moaning. We hear Diora say “O my god it’s my husband’ and she gets up and runs away. Upon discovering Nick in his underwear, Diora’s husband appears to make sexual advances towards him   

Use of substances

Fired Up contains implied substance use (alcohol), brief references to drug use, and behaviour that infers intoxication:

• At a beach party we see numerous teenagers, mainly male, holding drinks, and while no alcohol was visible, the inference is that the cups contain alcohol.
• One of the cheerleaders indicates that she would be willing to take steroids to improve her performance but no one takes her seriously.
• A male cheerleader who has just arrived at camp tells Nick and Shawn that he has bought beer with him.
• reference to the President of the United States snorting cocaine in titty bars.
• reference to the French allowing eight-year-old children drink wine
• Dr. Rick and two of his friends sing along with a drinking song being played on the car stereo.
• At football camp we see a number of teenage boy partying in a somewhat out of control manner, stumbling around, falling over and passing out. In the morning following the party we see them lying in what appears to be a drunken unconscious state in a living room.  
• During the end credits we hear bloopers where Nick says “I can smoke… and still be straight”  

Coarse language

Fired Up contains frequent coarse language and putdowns. Examples include:

• “Shit yourselves; wack-arse cheerleaders; kick the shit out of you; shit dick; hotter than your shit-hole; sweating our balls off; mongoloid; screw football; coach is going to screw us; sweet Mary in a D cup; FU; you don’t  poop where you eat; drove your fat arse; suck buckets; big arse titties; cocky arseholes; get cocky bitches; pissed about me; next time you screw up; you still suck arse.
• During the end credits we hear bloopers with the F word used but trailing off so that it is not distinguishable.              

In a nutshell

Fired Up is a high school sex comedy that targets a teenage audience and is likely to appeal to older adolescents, although the lead actors look older than the teenagers they are playing.

The main messages from this movie are that:

• you’ve got to take risks in life if you want to achieve and improve.
• improving your own performance is more important than coming first.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

• perseverance and determination
• empathy and respect
• being prepared to make sacrifices for friends.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with older children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as the promiscuous behaviour of the film’s lead characters and their attitude to women.

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sounds nice! for kids 12 and up!

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Anyone who's parents don't mind watching a funny movie..

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Not your average cheerleading movie, no, just, no.

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Has anyone seen a little known comedy called Fired Up! From 2009?

Not gonna claim it’s the greatest movie of all time but it’s just such a stupidly easy watch with a few quotable’s that my brother and I still quote nowadays, it’s literally 2 30 year olds playing college students and they just chat absolute shite to get girls but somehow the comedy is gold.

I’ve never met another person out in the wild who’s actually seen it, not one which is so odd for a movie

Fired Up! (2009)

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Alicia Vikander is the titular “Firebrand,” starring as Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII. But the movie that reframes her legacy as a free-thinking and vengeful radical is only fitfully fiery itself.  

Jude Law  actually steals the show as the corpulent and capricious king. Every time he’s on screen, director Karim Aïnouz’s film roars frighteningly to life. This ordinarily beautiful man subsumes himself to the grotesquerie, delivering a performance that’s at once hammy and terrifying.  

Otherwise, Aïnouz’s film, written by Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth and based on the historical fiction novel Queen’s Gambit  by Elizabeth Fremantle , is too often a muted period drama. Much of that is by necessity: Katherine must remain stealthy in her pursuits of intellectual and religious freedom or risk befalling the same fate as the previous five wives. It is literally a matter of survival. Vikander is an actress of understated grace, but here, she rarely gets the opportunity to indicate her character’s inner turmoil. The eyes of the court are on her always, and spies are everywhere. 

This is especially true during a brief period in 1544, when Henry is off fighting in France and Katherine holds the temporary position of regent. She’d already been serving as a mother figure to Henry’s children from earlier marriages, Elizabeth ( Junia Rees ) and Edward ( Patrick Buckley ), the young heir to the throne. But now she must lead meetings about boring bureaucratic stuff with advisers who side-eye each other at her suggestions.  

Katherine also uses the opportunity to visit with a childhood friend who’s become a charismatic preacher: Anne Askew ( Erin Doherty , hugely compelling in a brief role), who dares to have progressive notions about the church and be a woman at the same time. “Firebrand” truly sparks in this early scene, as we can see the charge of excitement running through Katherine’s body as she reconnects with someone who genuinely understands her, perhaps on multiple levels. The prospect of a romantic flirtation lingers in the thick forest air. 

But then it’s back to palace intrigue, full of whispers in dark corridors and hangers-on strenuously playing both sides. Chief among them is Eddie Marsan as Edward Seymour, uncle of Prince Edward through his late sister, Jane Seymour , Henry’s third wife. He and his brother, Thomas ( Sam Riley ), aim to remain in the volatile king’s good graces. There is also the undercooked suggestion that Katherine and Thomas may have had some kind of fling, which prompts the arrogant king’s jealousy. Mainly, these men are called upon here to mutter their manipulations beneath voluminous beards. Aïnouz rarely builds tension through these machinations; surprisingly, given what’s at stake, “Firebrand” is often a bit of a slog. 

What is effective, though, is the way the tone of a scene can flip instantly based on Henry’s whims. Moments at court that are meant to be joyous turn dangerous and perhaps even deadly if the arrogant king feels crossed. Aïnouz also depicts vividly the way Henry’s worsening leg infection causes him to deteriorate both physically and mentally. It is a gnarly thing to behold; we can practically smell the wretched stench emanating from the gash. 

But “Firebrand” also puts the prodigious skills of French cinematographer Hélène Louvart (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” “ La Chimera ”) to more artful use in her rendering of the British countryside. Mist wafting through the hills gives the film a moody and mysterious feel, and even a horseback ride across a sunny field seems ominous, particularly with the accompaniment of Dickon Hinchcliffe’s woozy, string-heavy score.  

“Firebrand” eventually becomes a waiting game, as Katherine tries to keep her schemes hidden long enough for Henry to die. Once the king can no longer rage by flickering firelight, the revisionist history is significant. And while the film’s final moments may feel satisfying on a primal level, they feel unearned from a narrative one. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Firebrand (2024)

120 minutes

Alicia Vikander as Katharine Parr

Jude Law as Henry VIII

Eddie Marsan as Edward Seymour

Sam Riley as Thomas Seymour

Simon Russell Beale as Stephen Gardiner

Erin Doherty as Anne Askew

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‘Firebrand’ Review: Placid Queen

Top-shelf actors and authentic Tudor table-setting fail to quicken this glumly unfocused take on the exploits of Henry VIII’s last wife, Katherine Parr.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

Not until I watched “Firebrand” did I think the sight of Jude Law’s naked behind could cause me to recoil rather than rejoice. Playing a late-career Henry VIII, Law is all rutting buttocks and barely mobile bulk, an obese, paranoid ruler with a weeping leg wound where maggots wriggle in ecstatic close-up. Law (and his director, Karim Aïnouz) might be laying it on thick, but his grotesque tyrant is the only thing lifting this dreary, ahistoric drama out of its narrative doldrums.

Adapted from Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2012 novel, “Queen’s Gambit,” “Firebrand” seeks to highlight Henry’s sixth and last wife, Katherine Parr (Alicia Vikander), the only queen to outlive the infamous king. Studious and devout, Parr conceals her Protestant sympathies while arguing in favor of women’s education and an English-language Bible. Her clandestine support for the poet and Protestant preacher Anne Askew (Erin Doherty), however, almost proves fatal when she’s accused of heresy by an oily bishop (Simon Russell Beale).

Unfolding in and around Whitehall Palace in 1547, the movie is lavishly, oppressively costumed, the actors imprisoned by fabric and a screenplay that plays fast and loose with the historical record. A plummy voice-over describes Henry’s kingdom as “blood-soaked” and “plague-ridden,” though we see little of either plasma or pustules. What we see is a queen whose downcast demeanor speaks less of a firebrand than of a wife placating a husband who isn’t above spousal decapitation if a younger, saucier option should wiggle past.

That Parr deserves a spotlight is easily argued. But the woman who believed herself chosen by God to influence the King is, despite Vikander’s skills, ill-served by this meandering, glum picture. So much so that, in just two brief appearances, Doherty’s vivid portrayal of the reformist Askew makes us wonder whom the film’s title is really memorializing.

Firebrand Rated R for spousal abuse and celebrity skin. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review attributed an erroneous distinction to Henry’s sixth and last wife, Katherine Parr. She was the only Queen to outlive the infamous king, not the only spouse to do so. 

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A Regal, Repugnant Jude Law Almost Saves Firebrand

By most accounts, Katherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII, was a well-educated and independent-minded woman who published books of translation and occasionally ran afoul of the king’s more distrustful toadies. She probably wasn’t quite the girlboss feminist Alicia Vikander plays in Karim Aïnouz’s Firebrand , secretly in alliance with heretics and revolutionaries and frantically conspiring behind the monarch’s back, but no matter — movies need not be strictly factual, and in a world where Six exists, so can Firebrand . If only the film were a little more convincing.

Based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s 2013 novel Queen’s Gambit , Firebrand introduces Katherine during her period as regent, controlling the throne while Henry (Jude Law) is off fighting the French. She’s making military and financial decisions while also going off to watch the fiery preaching of her old dear friend Anne Askew (a memorably screamy Erin Doherty), who rails against the divine power of monarchs and loudly calls for a people’s revolution. The fear and sadness that falls across Katherine’s face when she hears the king is returning from his military campaign indicates that her marriage to Henry wasn’t one based around love or loyalty.

As Henry, Law is a galactic and mercurial presence — alternately preening and embittered and needy and contemptuous but always very loudly so. Still, we can feel the charisma. He’s a monster, but we understand how this man held the throne for nearly four decades. The size of his personality is matched by the width of his torso; Aïnouz keeps his camera close to the characters so that Henry always takes up an enormous amount of space, both physically and emotionally. Even his infected, pus-filled leg seems like an extension of the spiritual rot that seems to spread wherever he goes.

The Brazilian Aïnouz is best known for earthy, heated melodramas like The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (2019) and Madame Satã (2002). This is his first English-language film, but he hasn’t tempered his style too much: The depravity and frenzy of the court clearly appeals to a director who’s always been fascinated by the animal urges of humans. He gets our baseness — he loves our baseness — and on one level, that serves him well with this tale of incessant royal intrigue.

And yet, it might not quite have been the right approach for a movie like this, which plunges us headlong into this busy, hectic world but doesn’t quite give us much context or reason to care about any of it. We struggle to keep up for much of Firebrand , a film that rewrites history but doesn’t bother to stop and explain what it’s actually saying. And while the script and the story spend a lot of time with Katherine, the movie doesn’t let Katherine herself breathe. Vikander keeps busy, in a constant state of agitation, but it’s mostly a one-note performance of a one-note character, lacking much imagination or vitality.

There’s a lot jam-packed into this movie, but it’s in such a rush to get through it all and to not bore us that it … well, it bores us. We’re lost, and we’re clearly not supposed to be. Characters and subplots flit by, conspiracies are breathlessly mentioned, and the whole thing winds up with a very silly nod to the future reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Henry’s daughter, much fussed over by Katherine Parr). The silliness isn’t even the problem. If anything, the whole movie probably should have been sillier, a fact that Law, with his broad, energetic performance, seems to get. At one point, about half an hour in, when Henry took to his harpsichord and tore into a raucous rendition of “Pastime With Good Company” (an actual song, and a very popular one, composed by the real Henry VIII), I briefly entertained the notion that the movie might turn out to be a musical. Alas, no such luck. And if Firebrand doesn’t know what kind of movie it wants to be, what hope could there be for the rest of us?

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