You walk into a movie like Fired Up and you’re not expecting much; maybe a few decent sight gags and a couple of good one liners. What you’re not expecting though is an actual fleshed-out script with numerous, hilarious lines and well thought out characters played by some fairly talented young actors. Just when you think that everything that can be done with cheerleaders and horny teens can be done, something like Fired Up manages to surprise because it doesn’t play to expectations. Instead of 90 minutes of jokes about bodily emanations and mistaken identities, we actually get a fairly respectable, well-rounded script. Not that I’m saying the movie’s perfect, but for what it is and what it could have, it’s hard to argue with results.

In Fired Up we get Shawn (Nicholas D'Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen), two football jocks that enjoy scoring off the field much more than scoring on the field. Staring down two weeks of female-less football camp in the middle of the scorching desert, Nick and Shawn hatch an alternative plan: join the cheerleading squad and head to cheer camp along with 300 other single ladies ripe for the plucking. If there’s one thing standing in their way, it’s the fact that they’ve never cheered in their lives, but if there’s two things than the other’s Carly (Sarah Roemer) the captain of the cheerleaders that can smell Nick and Shawn’s B.S. from a mile away. So, the boys do get there, and all goes according to plan except for the fact that they develop a taste for cheering.

That’s Fired Up in a nutshell, pure and simple. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but the success by in large comes from the two charismatic leads: D’Agosto and Olsen. They’re the Hawkeye and Trapper John of football jocks with cool quips and wisecracks, along with an inherent, natural ability to achieve the very best in their field. They’re not really bad guys, just a little overzealous when it comes to pursuing their sensual delights. And it’s not like they don’t learn anything along the way; what kind of movie would this be if they didn’t? Anyway, the reason you can’t help loving these two guys is because of the actors that play them. Olsen’s always been on the cusp of comedic leading man status, so I hope this puts him over in a better position career-wise. As for D’Agosto, his work here is infinitely more suiting to him than playing the emo flyboy in Heroes last season.

On the ladies’ side, Roemer makes for a good foil to Shawn and Nick’s antics, and the blossoming romance between Carly and Shawn is handled in a fairly believable way. That’s unlike, say, the relationship between Carly and her pre-existing boyfriend Dr Rick (David Walton), the arrogant blowhard that blasts the best of the 90s from his car stereo. Now Dr Rick makes for a tremendously hilarious punchline bag, but the character was too broadly drawn to truly be taken seriously. John Michael Higgins comes close to that point as head cheer coach, but he’s just such a winning comedic actor even though he always seems to get stuck playing these guys that are oblivious to their questioning sexuality. Philip Baker Hall also gets some screen time as Nick and Shawn’s expletive-filled coach (or at least as expletive filled as PG-13 allows.)

But the main show belongs to the kids, and not just Olsen, D’Agosto and Roemer either. Look for little Juliette Goglia later on. She steals the show as Shawn’s younger sister, Poppy who gives the boys the lowdown on how to finagle a ride to cheer camp in exchange for getting Shawn’s bedroom (the one with the private bathroom). Later on, she turns up with sugary snacks she’ll part with for a reasonable price, an oasis of relief from the leafy greens of the cheer camp diet. Fired Up itself feeds on zaniness, an irreverence that a lot of movies try too darn hard to achieve but are never able to reach. In this film, it seems so easy, and to the actors and filmmakers I offer my kudos. Sure, it’s just another horn dog teen movie, but sometimes doing the thing right makes all the difference.