Fighting with My Family

Here is a drama where I was pretty much constantly one step ahead the entire running time, but I still find myself completely engaged while watching it.  Fighting with My Family follows the Sport Underdog Movie Formula right down to the letter, but it also has an extremely witty and warm script by writer-director Stephen Merchant.  For humor, Merchant relies on everything from dry dialogue to slapstick humor, and it all works, getting some very big laughs.  But, it's also surprisingly smart, sympathetic, and knowledgeable.  This is a reliable formula movie done right.

The film takes us into the world of Professional Wrestling, where it's no surprise to know that everything is staged, scripted and planned out.  However, as the film's Wrestling Coach (played by Vince Vaughn) tells his students, it's all about the passion that you bring to the fight.  The fans know that it's all an act, but they come for the storylines and for the characters partaking in the fight.  You have to be able to sell your character there in the ring, or else the fans are not going to respond to you.  In a way, Merchant has done the same thing with his film.  We pretty much know the outcome walking into the movie, but he knows how to sell the material with a wonderful cast and a script that is genuinely poignant at some times, and hilarious at others.  He understands the lessons that are being learned within his own script, and he uses them to great effect here.

The one who truly drew me in was relative newcomer Florence Pugh, who gives a star-making turn as a real-life WWE Diva named Paige.  Given her relative inexperience (her largest big screen credit up to now was appearing in the Liam Neeson thriller, The Commuter), she effortlessly commands the screen.  She is aided by a fantastic supporting cast who make up her character's family, including Nick Frost and Lena Headey as her unconventional yet caring parents, and Jack Lowden as her older brother Zak.  The family dynamic that Pugh and her co-stars create is one of the key reasons behind the film's success, and why I found myself so engaged.  The path the film takes may be familiar, but these are fascinating, funny, and compelling characters.  Merchant's script draws us in with this interesting family, and then goes one step further by actually developing and digging deep into the bond between them.  This is as much a film about a family staying together, as it is Paige's story of going from a hopeful, to a potential superstar within the WWE.

The film's inspiration is the real-life Bevis clan (renamed the Knights in the film), a working class British family who have devoted their entire lives to wrestling.  They have already been the subject of a documentary film (unseen by me), and the end credits do include some interviews with the real family, which goes further to show just how much Merchant cared about his subject matter and got it right.  The whole family lives for wrestling, not just for entertainment, but perhaps also to escape their own pasts.  The father and mother, Ricky and Julia, both have troubled pasts.  He's an ex-con who served eight years in prison ("mostly for violence", he says), while she used to be an addict who was contemplating ending it all when they met.  Their mutual love for professional wrestling not only brought them together, but inspired them to both go straight.  Their oldest son is serving time in prison as the film opens, so both of them are determined not to let their two younger children follow the same path, and to instead focus on a possible future in Professional Wrestling. 

We get the story of how their teenage daughter (Pugh) got the chance to come to America to audition for the WWE, but this is just as much the story of her relationship with her brother Zak, who has also dreamed of joining the WWE, and can't help but take it personally when his sister gets chosen over him.  Zak has a girlfriend and a new baby to support, and wrestling is the only thing he knows how to do, so he withdraws within himself, feeling a mix of failure and jealousy.  The brother and sister relationship not only adds some additional drama, but it's unexpectedly powerful, given that the script allows these characters plenty of time to explore their relationship.  Mixed in with all this is the usual story of how Paige doesn't quite fit in at first, and struggles with the training.  But, thanks to the guidance of the world-weary coach (Vaughn) and some of the friends she makes along the way (including Dwayne Johnson, who makes a cameo as himself in a couple of scenes), Paige rises above it all, and gets a chance to be a star within the Pro Wrestling world.

Fighting with My Family may be stock, but it knows how to dig deeper and hit the right emotional notes so that we're with it every step of the way.  I found myself feeling invested with the characters and the relationships, because not only does Merchant know how to mine these people for laughs, but to also make them undeniable charming and likable.  And as the relationship between Paige and Zak begins to take center stage and drive the narrative, I found myself caring about these characters a lot more than I thought.  There is a lot of genuine heart and emotion mixed in with the laughs and the conventional plotting, and that's what sets this apart.  It becomes more than we initially expect, and when it's over, we are glad that we got to know these characters.  I enjoyed spending time with them, and it made me want to seek out more material about the real life individuals who inspired them.

This is a perfect example of a movie that doesn't really do anything new, but still feels fresh.  It goes beyond the cookie cutter formula, and gives us something to think about, and people we can get behind.  That's all I really want from most of the movies I watch.  I don't need to be bowled over by originality, just give me an experience with some characters I can truly get behind.  This movie gave that to me in spades, and is the first pleasant surprise of 2019.

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