Fighting with My Family - Review
Director: Stephen Merchant
Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Nick frost, Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson
Co-creator of The Office and Hello Ladies Stephen Merchant has demonstrated time and time again that he can mine character-based comedy out of any scenario and he does so again with Fighting with My Family, the true life story about WWE favourite Paige's rise to fame and super stardom.
Siblings Raya/Paige (Pugh) and Zak (Lowden) are born into a family of ardent wrestling fans and begin training in the sport at a young age. Zak and Paige are invited to try out for the WWE but after only Paige earns a spot on the competitive training program, she must leave behind everything she knows in Norwich and head to America where she is pushed to her limits.
Writer-director Stephen Merchant abides by all of the screenwriting rules, with each act and sequence hitting the appropriate beats. This culminates in a foreseeable experience where you can see the outcome of events unfolding a mile-off, but the story is infused with such warmth and wit that you ultimately cease to care about its predictability.
The by-the-numbers material is elevated by a host of wonderful performances, namely by Jack Lowden who provides the film's most dramatic and heart-wrenching moments. Zak's sole ambition in life is to become a WWE star, travel the world and support his girlfriend and their new baby boy. After he fails to impress wrestling coach Hutch (Vaughn) and misses out on the chance to train in America, Zak begins to unravel as he desperately tries to secure a spot on the coveted program to no avail. He descends into heartbreak, triggering destructive behaviour that manifests itself when Paige returns home from America to spend Christmas with her family. Thanks to Lowden, Zak's plight and circumstance are even more empathetic and his shifting between emotional states as he struggles to come to terms with the demise of his dream is beautifully measured. We feel every lurch of desperation and even though Fighting with My Family falls largely under the comedy category, its the dramatic scenes that truly standout.
Although she is a formidable screen presence and one of Britain's most exciting and talented young actors, Pugh is hindered by Paige's limitations as she is not afforded the same material or character exploration that Zak receives. Paige feels out of place due to her divergent interests and singular style but other than these material and surface points of conflict, we never get the sense of what her true insecurities are and her passion and motivation remain a little unclear, especially in comparison to that of her brother's.
Although this straightforward biopic is nothing that we narratively haven't seen before, Fighting with My Family's familiar formula proves to be a crowd-pleasing charmer with a message that audiences can truly get behind.
EB
Cast: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Nick frost, Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn, Dwayne Johnson
Co-creator of The Office and Hello Ladies Stephen Merchant has demonstrated time and time again that he can mine character-based comedy out of any scenario and he does so again with Fighting with My Family, the true life story about WWE favourite Paige's rise to fame and super stardom.
Siblings Raya/Paige (Pugh) and Zak (Lowden) are born into a family of ardent wrestling fans and begin training in the sport at a young age. Zak and Paige are invited to try out for the WWE but after only Paige earns a spot on the competitive training program, she must leave behind everything she knows in Norwich and head to America where she is pushed to her limits.
Writer-director Stephen Merchant abides by all of the screenwriting rules, with each act and sequence hitting the appropriate beats. This culminates in a foreseeable experience where you can see the outcome of events unfolding a mile-off, but the story is infused with such warmth and wit that you ultimately cease to care about its predictability.
The by-the-numbers material is elevated by a host of wonderful performances, namely by Jack Lowden who provides the film's most dramatic and heart-wrenching moments. Zak's sole ambition in life is to become a WWE star, travel the world and support his girlfriend and their new baby boy. After he fails to impress wrestling coach Hutch (Vaughn) and misses out on the chance to train in America, Zak begins to unravel as he desperately tries to secure a spot on the coveted program to no avail. He descends into heartbreak, triggering destructive behaviour that manifests itself when Paige returns home from America to spend Christmas with her family. Thanks to Lowden, Zak's plight and circumstance are even more empathetic and his shifting between emotional states as he struggles to come to terms with the demise of his dream is beautifully measured. We feel every lurch of desperation and even though Fighting with My Family falls largely under the comedy category, its the dramatic scenes that truly standout.
Although she is a formidable screen presence and one of Britain's most exciting and talented young actors, Pugh is hindered by Paige's limitations as she is not afforded the same material or character exploration that Zak receives. Paige feels out of place due to her divergent interests and singular style but other than these material and surface points of conflict, we never get the sense of what her true insecurities are and her passion and motivation remain a little unclear, especially in comparison to that of her brother's.
Although this straightforward biopic is nothing that we narratively haven't seen before, Fighting with My Family's familiar formula proves to be a crowd-pleasing charmer with a message that audiences can truly get behind.
EB
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