FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY
The young and the wrestlers…
Stephen Merchant directs The Rock. At last.
Consider, if you will, the magnificently wonky career of Stephen Merchant. From the dizzy heights of The Office and Extras to the shuddering lows of Life’s Too Short, to a recent slew of serious roles in Logan and The Girl In The Spider’s Web, he’s proving impossible to second guess. And now? He’s written/ directed a true-story Britcom about wrestlers, obvs.
Based on Channel 4 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting With My Family, Merchant’s movie centres on the Bevis family, namely dad Patrick (Nick Frost), mum Julia (Lena Headey), and siblings Zak (Jack Lowden) and Saraya ‘Paige’ (Florence Pugh). A dysfunctional bunch, the Bevises are, as Zak puts it, “Riddled with wrestling – and there’s no cure.” Together, they compete in Norwich’s World Association of Wrestling, a collective so unglamorous it would give Mickey Rourke’s character in The Wrestler second thoughts.
While trying out for the WWE at London’s O2, Zak and Paige meet The Rock (“We’ve been fans since you had hair!” she offers), and are berated by surly coach Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn). While Paige impresses and goes to Florida to train, Zak gets the thumbs down, and stays home to mope.
It’s a cluttered start. The music cues are over-zealous; Lowden and Pugh seem uncomfortable with their accents; Vaughn could do this kind of role in his sleep; and The Rock’s cameo (he’s in two scenes) feels opportunistic – especially as he’s front and centre on the poster. Frost, of course, is reliably funny as the bearish patriarch, especially when he’s told to put his shirt on to meet Zak’s girlfriend’s parents (Merchant and Julia Davis). “Shirt on?” he complains. “How bloody posh are they?”
Slam Paige
Fighting… starts to hit its stride in the US sequences, where Pugh’s pluck comes to the fore when faced with picture-perfect rivals (Aqueela Zoll, Kim Matula and Ellie Gonsalves).
“I love your accent,” chirrups one. “You sound like a Nazi in a movie.” But still it cuts back to Zak and his kitchen-sink struggles. This plot strand reaches its climax when Paige returns to Norwich for Christmas, and he sets out to hurt her during a grudge match.
It’s an effectively nasty sequence, but what are we watching here? A brother beating up his sister because she’s better than him at play-fighting? Pugh really comes into her own in the dramatic scenes, but it’s a relief when Zak’s story is finally put to bed so we can concentrate on Paige making the cut at WWE. No prizes for guessing what happens next, or who pops up to wish her well. Nonetheless, something must be working, because it’s nigh-on impossible not to root for her.
“The fans know 100 per cent if you’re not being real,” pronounces The Rock, but the film – like wrestling itself – treads an awkward line between truth and fiction, British grit and American wish-fulfilment. Over the end credits, excerpts from the original documentary show how close Frost and Headey are to their real-life counterparts, but you’re left wondering if the material might have been better served in the original format or – whisper it – as a mockumentary. Matt Glasby
THE VERDICT
With a game cast and some good lines, Fighting With My Family wins you over, although it sometimes feels like being pummelled into submission.