Fighting With My Family

Most people who know me well know I'm a lifelong fan of professional wrestling. From the time I was 8 years old I was irrevocably hooked on cartoon combat, and that tradition continues to this day, as I continue to watch WWE programming weekly, sometimes with my children, and my immersion in it is at the level of fanboyism.

And forgive me for interjecting myself into this review, but in this instance it feels particularly necessary. "Fighting with My Family" is a film I've been aware of for quite some time, hoping it would be the film to bring wrestling to new audiences as the fun, mostly (but not completely) cheeky form of entertainment it has always been for me.

I left the theater mildly disappointed. With its movie-magic heart, often hamfisted, basic life lessons like "don't give up," and "be happy for those close to you, even if you don't make it yourself," this isn't the wrestling movie I'VE been waiting for my whole life, but it might just be the wrestling movie the world needs.

As sports movies goes, "Fighting" is solid enough, respecting wrestling while acknowledging a) it's scriptedness, and b) its reputation with the masses, offering us a (tiny) peek behind the curtain to demonstrate the athleticism involved, as well as the behind-the-scenes machinations that make or break burgeoning careers, spirits, and bodies.

As a family drama, it's weak, with narrative crutches acting as trestles held together with bubblegum, with beats as standard and predictable as you can imagine. Also making a somewhat poor attempt to keep the house standing is its attitude, glopping humor in an attempt to mask the pedestrian nature of the relationships.

This story, based on the real-life tale of Saraya Knight, known in WWE circles as Paige, takes liberties obvious to ,most wrestling fans. All eyes behind raven hair, Florence Pugh plays Saraya/Paige as an outsider, not quite homely but not exactly classically beautiful, something of a misfit to most of the "respectable" people of podunk Norwich, a town in the UK.

Saraya's penchant for a lip ring, dark eye liner, and black clothing only serves to emphasize her outsiderness, which her family only fosters. They are a family of professional wrestlers, the head of a promotion with a small, loyal following, for which Saraya and her brother Zak (Jack Lowden) are the promotion's biggest stars. Ricky (Nick Frost) and Julia (Lena Heady) are the parents, local stars in their own right who rely on their children to continue the family business, as tenuous as that business may be.

Zak is popular in his hometown, but it's easy to see in the world of The Rock and John Cena, that his physique and his skills don't really translate to the big time. Still, though, he persists, looking and expecting more.

Saraya loves her family dearly, but longs to be taken seriously as a woman and as a wrestler. She wrestles as much out of obligation to her family as her own love of it, but when they get the call from WWE for a tryout, only she is selected.

It's this family dynamic that holds the film together, even as the meat of the film is Saraya's transformation to Paige, the porcelain-skinned beauty whose outer image masks an inner toughness that will make her one of WWE's brightest stars (at least before injuries derailed her career).

Or will it? Paige runs into Hutch (Vince Vaughn, in a role where he excels at playing himself, but fails miserably at playing an ex-wrestler-turned trainer), who shoots almost too straight for her. Still, he's full of sage advice, and acts as a sort-of mentor as she struggles to connect with the group of busty models (read: non-wrestlers) who are now her colleagues.

Hutch is an ex-wrestler whose injuries forced him into training, and his beleaguered coach shtick is straight out of the Sports Coach Cliche Handbook. He's the seemingly merciless trainer who pushes his charges to the brink of exhaustion, daring those not tough enough to quit. His talisman of choice is a horn, which he thrusts into the faces of the beaten-down apprentices and dares them to honk it, signalling their tap out.

Wrestling fans will love seeing references to NXT, the WWE's training facility, though the film strongly misrepresents the stages of that journey Paige navigates, and her level of experience upon her inevitable WWE debut, not to mention how that debut plays out on national television (and it's very easy for anyone interested to find the actual clip on YouTube and/or the WWE Network from back in 2014).

There are a few other factual inaccuracies that most hardcore wrestling fans will pick out easily, but the spirit of the story remains more or less intact. Writer/director Stephen Merchant seems to have been working within a lot of restrictions, so he chose to leave his story as a rather standard one. The involvement of WWE would make it easy enough to verify those facts, but WWE has always played fast and loose with their own history.

Cameos from WWE wrestlers, including Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson (whose onboarding as executive producer helped get this film made and obtain a theatrical release) are a welcome addition to the film as well, though most of the speaking characters in the film are more generic archetypes, when many of Paige's contemporaries would likely be on WWE rosters as stars today.

"Fighting with My Family" is a movie you have seen countless times in various permutations over the years, but if you aren't a wrestling fan you probably haven't seen it in this format. In that sense, this film is certainly worth a look, even if you aren't a wrestling fan. If you are, you'll probably go out of your way to see it.

I hope you enjoy it more than I did.