Any night’s all right for Fighting with this Family
Fighting With My Family
(M, 107 mins)
Directed by Stephen Merchant Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★
I’ve never been to a professional wrestling show. If I ever did, I kinda expect I would enjoy it a lot more than I’d enjoy a night at Cirque du Soleil or the World of Wearable Arts.
But, I don’t really know, since I’ve never been to either of those events, either. Something about people playing dress-ups and risking their bones and tendons for my amusement just makes me nervous.
But I reckon, maybe, if I happen to be around when the WWE next rolls into where ever I happen to be, I’ll get a ticket, because, according to Fighting With My
Family, it looks pretty awesome.
Fighting With My Family is actor/writer/director Stephen Merchant’s (Logan) adaptation of a story first laid out in the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family, on the Bevis family, from Norwich in England.
The Bevises are all wrestlers, making a living touring the pubs and clubs of the district with a revolving lineup of locals and wannabes, dressed up in adorably cartoonish and homemade outfits, flinging themselves around in a series of rehearsed routines to give the impression of mortal enemies fighting each other to a standstill.
Out of this cheerful troupe, the Bevis’ eldest daughter Saraya began to shine. So much so that she and her brother Zac were invited to London to audition for the big show, the NXT division that was the feeder system for the WWE, with its global audience and massive wealth.
Saraya travelled to Florida to train, chose ‘‘Paige’’ as her new nom-de-bash, and went on to become the youngest woman world champion in WWE history.
I walked into Fighting With My
Family expecting a boiler plate sports movie. And in many ways, that is exactly what it is.
Hero arises, hero fails when they lose sight of their true self, hero has moment of clarity and then triumphs by returning to their true self. Cue tears.
We all know this. From Rocky II to Cars and now this likeable Brit’ contender, it has always been so.
Although, if you were standing in the lobby of your local picture palace tonight, wondering what to spend your hard-earned on, then you might guess from the poster that Fighting With My Family is some sort of sports comedy featuring Dwayne ‘‘The Rock’’ Johnson.
Johnson is so dominant in the marketing for this film, it almost pains me to tell you he’s only in it for 10 minutes or so, in a couple of brief and pretty good scenes, playing himself in his wrestling days.
Less expected is a half-time run on by Vince Vaughn, reminding us yet again how effectively he can play the exact same character in every film he appears in.
But the star here, by a jackknife powerbomb, is Florence Pugh. After a handful of decent roles in Lady Macbeth and some top-drawer TV, Fighting With My Family is exactly the calling card Pugh needs to break into some serious stardom.
In a cast bursting with scenestealers – her mum is played by Lena Headey (that’s Game of
Thrones’ Cersei freakin’ Lannister to you), her dad by Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) – Pugh knocks this film out of the ring. You might walk in wanting to see Johnson, but it’s Pugh you’ll be talking about on the way home.
Fighting With My Family isa plucky, funny and unexpectedly moving wee film. I liked it a great deal.