Welcome to the Shrine to Actors

Okay, actor Nicholas D’Agosto is currently appearing in the teen cheerleader flick Fired Up! This young actor has guest starred on ER, Six Feet Under, House M.D., Supernatural, and Without a Trace, with multi-episode stints on The Office and Heroes. His first credit on IMDB is for the Oscar-nominated film Election, with Reese Witherspoon. That was back when he was actually a teenager, because now D’Agosto is closing in on 29. That’s right, 29.

I thought this was going to be my first installment of The Dirty Old Lady Cave, a place where grown women squee over very young men. All under-30s still qualify for the Cave, but D’Agosto’s only one year away from being a perfectly acceptable age to think inappropriate thoughts about. While this is good news, it still begs the question of what D’Agosto is doing in a teen flick that Ebert gave a one star review to. Considering the amusingly biting sarcasm Ebert used in that review, I’d say Fired Up! is well on its way to being in the next edition of Your Movie Sucks.

Here’s a 10 minute preview, that pretty much will negate you having to see the film (if, in fact, you had any desire to see it in the first place).

I’m sure the audience it’s intended for will love it. To be fair, D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen have good chemistry and their synchronized gestures are fairly amusing. The 32 year old (!) Olsen seems to be channeling his inner Jim Carrey, which is no surprise as he played a younger version of Jim Carrey in the sequel to Dumb and Dumber. It just gets tiresome seeing these “teen” flicks with no teenagers in them, where all the cheerleaders are Playboy models, and the school activities budgets are in the zillions of dollars. This movie is supposed to take place in Hinsdale, IL. That’s why it has nothing at all to do with the reality of Hinsdale, and was filmed entirely in California. If it actually took place in Hinsdale, the girls would be cheering in pants and sweaters and there would be snow on the field.

I guess there’s money incentive for Nicholas D’Agosto, as doing a film must pay more generously than a one-off stint on a TV show. Still, D’Agosto’s pedigree was pretty impressive up until now, and it seems a waste for him to turn up in an empty-headed misogynistic homophobic teen flick. But I suppose if it does well at the box office and teenage girls everywhere go swooning over Nicholas D’Agosto, perhaps it is a wise move out of relative obscurity.

Of course, after this he moves on to Mardi Gras, where the only name in the cast list I recognize is Carmen Electra. Yeahy. On the other hand, American Pie’s Seann William Scott has made a nice living off of frat boy films.

Here’s hoping D’Agosto’s 30s might bring him loftier film roles. He’s a good actor, and he’s adorable, and I’d love it if he’d do a film I’d actually want to go to the theater to see (or be caught seeing.)

Fired Up! is now playing at theaters.

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Nicholas D’Agosto screencaps from TV Guide’s TV Watercooler interview for his role in Heroes, courtesy of Hulu.

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