Fighting With My Family is crowd-pleasing and uplifting

If all you want is an easygoing and warm movie that’s going to put a smile on your face, this is it.

There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking or fresh about Fighting With My Family, but it doesn’t need to be.

The British-American flick is a rousing crowd-pleaser, guaranteed to make you smile, at least once. You may even leap out of your seat and whoop, if such undignified public displays are your kind of thing.

It’s an all-in, family friendly movie that has a little something for most viewers — sounds like a cliche but true.

You want dry British humour? Sure, it delivers in spades — especially from the lips of Nick Frost and Lena Headey.

You want an underdog-made-good story? Absolutely. You’ll cheer for Florence Pugh’s Paige.

You want The Rock? Yes. He’s here — though only really in cameo form and certainly not as much as the movie poster would suggest. He’s also a producer.

Loosely based on the real-life story of Saraya “Paige” Knight, a professional WWE wrestler, Fighting With My Family was written and directed by Stephen Merchant, who also makes a cameo alongside the equally funny Julia Davis.

‘This isn’t the audition for American Idol?’

Eighteen-year-old Paige lives and works with her kooky parents (Frost and Headey) and her brother Zak (Jack Lowden) in Norwich, England. The family are mad wrestlers, running their own third-rate ring and league.

Since Paige was 10, she’s loved the spectacle, so when she and Zak are given a shot at auditioning for the WWE’s training program in Florida, they think it’s their chance at the big leagues.

But despite her initial confidence, the training program isn’t what she expected. Homesick, lonely and exhausted, Paige has to find the motivation and passion to prove to Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn), the program’s director, she deserves to stay.

More importantly, she has to prove it to herself.

Sibling rivalry

There’s also a compelling subplot about Paige and Zak’s relationship, which starts to fracture when she realises the dream he couldn’t pull off.

That story of being so close to it, but not being good enough, gives Lowden ample emotional territory to explore.

Since her breakout role in Lady Macbeth two years ago, Pugh has announced herself as a serious actor to watch, and she’s already proven her nous in drama so it’s nice to see her in a role that requires a different side.

Fighting With My Family roughly follows the formula of these types of sports biopics, with the added sprinkle of Merchant’s deliciously dry sense of humour. It’s also very well-paced.

Much of the movie’s humour is mined from Frost and Headey, two reformed recalcitrants who have flirted with “coke, crack and heroin, but not combined” and say whatever comes into the heads — but have big, warm hearts.

It’s the kind of family you might be embarrassed by if you saw them in the supermarket but secretly want to be a part of because their love for each other is palpable.

The family that fights together stays together

You don’t have to be into wrestling to enjoy Fighting With My Family — it doesn’t require any assumed knowledge. But given that the movie was made with the co-operation of the WWE, you can imagine that it’s not some big expose of how the competition works — as they stress in the movie, it’s fixed, not fake.

Fighting With My Family, not unusually, takes liberties with the real Paige’s story, and it certainly contracts the timeline.

It also tends to not focus that the big triumphs were probably scripted not just in this screenplay, but in a boardroom somewhere in the WWE head office. When you know that, the movie’s triumph feels a little bit cheap.

Especially when you consider Netflix series GLOW has already taught us what wrestling competitions are about, above all — money, entertainment and winning over a crowd that isn’t always civil.

For all that though, Fighting With My Family is an uplifting, easygoing and warm movie which will win you over — and we could all use some of that right now.

Rating: ★★★½

Fighting With My Family is in cinemas now.

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