`Fighting With My Family'

(PG-13, 108 minutes,

Even the most eccentric passions of working-class England have seldom featured as much spandex as “Fighting With My Family.”

Patrick “Rowdy Ricky Knight” Bevis (Nick Frost) and Julia “Sweet Saraya” Bevis (Lena Headey) are your average parents, raising a couple of tykes in Norwich, England, to stand up for themselves, work together, and, you know, maintain a firm choke hold. Collectively they worship at the altar of “Macho Man” Randy Savage.

“Fighting With My Family,” the solo writing-directing debut of Stephen Merchant, is based on a true story and a colorful documentary. Saraya-Jade (Florence Pugh) and her older brother, Zak (Jack Lowden), have been bred by their WWE-obsessed parents to leg-drop and pile-drive. They each aspire to the big time while ardently participating in their family's far more regional and ragtag wrestling business.

The twist in “Fighting With My Family” is not only that Saraya-Jade actually succeeds, winning a tryout with the WWE in Florida, but that this modest and formulaic sports movie takes on unexpected heavyweight status. “Fighting With My Family” was made with the blessing and the branding of the WWE, and it includes plenty of pro wrestler cameos, most notably The Rock, who's a producer on the film.

Yet “Fighting With My Family” isn't just about the quixotic smalltown dreams of some hard-scrabble devotees, but the leap into megawatt fame, and the strain it can put on family dynamics. When a wisecracking trainer named Hutch (Vince Vaughn) at a London tryout picks SarayaJade, who renames herself Paige, Zak is told he doesn't have the “it” factor his sister exudes.

But Paige, dark-haired, lip-pierced and heavily accented, isn't so sure of herself, either.

It's a compelling and likable cast, and Merchant keeps the film mostly lively, good-hearted and consistently funny. — Jake Coyle, Associated Press