Movie Reviews: Delhi-6, Fired Up, Madea Goes to Jail

FIRED UP Getting high and mighty on teen-sex comedies is a sucker’s game, but it’s worth noting how particularly abhorrent a movie like Fired Up is. Not content to be just another dumb high school flick, it’s actually teaching young, virginal viewers to treat women like stupid, submissive slut-cattle for the rest of their lives. Bored of banging every last chick in school, horny football studs Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) ditch their team for a couple weeks of cheer camp, where they will be the only straight dudes in a sea of 600 tits, er, 300 cheerleaders. They’re basically the same insipid conquistador, except Nick is the more officious schemer, and Shawn is the science whiz who helps all the (brainless) girls with their homework. Learning a few cheers but never punished for their piggish insolence (the third-act inspirational speech, literally: “Be a cocky asshole”), Nick eventually wins over an older coach (Molly Sims) with his secret poetry, and Shawn falls in love with squad leader Carly (Sarah Roemer) because she’s the only girl who didn’t want to whore around on first sight. We’re light-years from Animal House, sure, but who ever thought we would long for the richer, funnier dignity of American Pie? (Citywide) (Aaron Hillis)

HOOKERS, INC. When their revenues prove insufficient to fund the porno movie they dream of making, two Hollywood escort drivers (Tim Pingel and Matthew Dowling) try to expand their business by acquiring the services of the extremely stupid “Starship with an I” (Joy Somers) and “Starshyp with a Y” (Camille Solari), a pair of clueless dancers who think they’re being hired to do massages, and are terrible even in that capacity. Like Deuce Bigalow, they somehow manage to satisfy clients by just talking things out rather than actually having sex; only once is this shown to be as dangerously naive as it actually would be. There’s almost certainly a good movie to be made on the topic of the “escorts” who advertise in the back of publications like the one you’re reading right now, and for about 20 minutes, Hookers, Inc. (which was directed by Pingel and co-written by Solari) seems to capture the grit of Hollywood Boulevard. Then it loses focus, trying to parody celebrity culture, the porn industry and couples therapy, without propelling any of its storylines forward — though, if you still think Kato Kaelin jokes are funny, you may laugh a time or two. Pingel and Solari deserve credit for their willingness to appear so dense and unlikable on camera. Too bad their movie can be described with those same adjectives. (Grande 4-Plex) (Luke Y. Thompson)

MADEA GOES TO JAIL When we last saw Tyler Perry’s signature character — the bosomy, blunt-smoking, Glock-yielding Georgia granny — she and her brother, Joe (also Perry), were being pulled over by the po-po in a cameo in last March’s Meet the Browns (this is Perry’s third film in 11 months). Wearing a fat suit and earrings for more than two minutes for the first time since Madea’s Family Reunion (2006), Perry isn’t content to operate in one genre when he can stuff in at least three. He leavens — not altogether seamlessly — his ludicrous fallen-woman melodrama (Assistant D.A. Derek Luke is determined to save crazy-wigged prostitute Keshia Knight Pulliam, a childhood friend who took a bad turn after two years in college) with Madea’s broad humor: “I’ll rip out your urethra tube!” Check off all of Perry’s motifs: vilification of the black bourgie princess, tough-love Christian messages, Academy Award–nominated actresses (Viola Davis, this time) managing to maintain their dignity. As ridiculous as his films frequently are, Perry, a shrewd yet benevolent showman, knows and loves his audience. And 2009 is a particularly resonant year for Madea, who, though she out-bullies Dr. Phil and beats a butch blonde yardbird into submission, still isn’t as tough as the grandma now living in the White House. (Citywide) (Melissa Anderson)

GO  MOSCOW, BELGIUM We’re not talking the Dardennes brothers here, but fellow Belgian Christophe Van Rompaey gives this light May-to-December pair-up an agreeably mussed, pedestrian milieu. Rather than an exquisitely frumpified romcom creation, Matty (Barbara Sarafian), 41, is a middle-class Ghent mother of three pretending to be shrewish while her experimentally estranged hubby dithers. (Her neighborhood’s “Moscow” moniker is just title bait.) A fender-bender triggers a persistent suitor in lanky, rangy trucker Johnny (Jurgen Delnaet), and their one-night stand leads, a few requisite demurrals later, to a home-cooked dinner with her and the kids (menu: blood sausage and stewed apples). But out of emotional routine, Matty still humors the indecision of her weak-willed art-teacher husband, who’s like a sitcom neighbor with an excuse to drop by. The clichés are firmly in place, no question: Johnny is Mr. Fix-It, drawing out her shy son with comic book references, and the romantic volleying chugs along until it’s suddenly time not to. Yet Sarafian’s maternally weary manner suits the low-key tone perfectly (and the accordion score is admirably unrepentant). Though it backs away from Johnny’s adventuresomely not-funny past (courtesy of his rival asking, sigh, “a friend at the police station”), Moscow, Belgium leaves you less offended and dirty-feeling than the evidence suggests. (Nuart) (Nicolas Rapold)