Out at the Movies: Meet the queer-leaders of "Fired Up!"

While Fired Up! is a teen sex comedy that's mostly got hete-romance on its mind, you can't make a movie set at cheerleading camp without throwing in some gay characters.

Read on to find out more!

You can tell there's a no-holds-barred, R-rated raunchy farce just bursting at Fired Up!'s PG-13 seams, but the new movie still makes a pretty hilarious Oscar weekend alternative to duty-bound attendance at Frost/Nixon or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And Fired Up! definitely gets a Spirit Stick for making its queer characters both funny and never the butt of the joke. They include:

John Michael Higgins

The always-brilliant John Michael Higgins as camp leader Coach Keith. While he's ostensibly married to Diora (Molly Sims), he seems way more enthusiastic about seeing the film's leads Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) and Shawn (Nicolas D'Agosto) doing naked cheers with strategically-placed pompons. (The guys wind up in the buff after a raccoon steals their clothes during a late-night skinny-dip with nubile babes, including The L Word's Kate French. You know how these things happen.)

Adhir Kalyan
 

Adhir Kalyan of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Aliens in America plays Brewster, the high-strung gay boy who rooms with Nick and Shawn. During an outdoor screening of cheerleading classic Bring It On — which all the campers can recite by heart — Brewster notes his deep and abiding love for Jesse Bradford. And really, who can blame him?

Jake Sandvig

And then there's Jake Sandvig (Cracking Up) as Downey, the dude-ly cheerleader whom everyone quickly clocks as gay except for Nick, the object of Downey's affections, leading to an amusing punchline late in the film. It's kind of exciting to know that the new breed of testosterone-soaked comedies about guys chasing girls don't have to be homophobic or misogynist. (There's even a funny scene early on when Nick suggests to his football teammate Shawn that they go to cheerleading camp, prompting Shawn to reply, "Awww ... are you coming out to me? That is so brave of you." Nick replies that he could "watch a Project Runway marathon with Nathan Lane's head in my blouse" and still be straight.)

Also opening this weekend is Tyler Perry's latest, Madea Goes to Jail, one in a series of lucrative films that involve Perry wearing a dress. Since the auteur apparently has nothing but disdain for film critics (and labor unions, but that's another story), we all have to wait until Friday morning and buy a ticket since he refuses to screen his work for the media. If the critic population weren't shrinking so rapidly, I'd suggest that maybe this is why Perry's opening weekends are so successful.