Fighting with My Family

While plenty of former professional wrestlers have attempted to make the transition to being movie actors, and some have even succeeded, the death-defying stunts of the ring have very rarely made their way into the movies themselves. Nacho Libre does it with irreverent silliness, and with luchadores rather than the WWE, and The Wrestler does it with earnest pathos, but other than that it is hard for me to think of any. Now Fighting with My Family enters the ring.

Fighting with My Family is somewhere in between Nacho Libre and The Wrestler in tone. It is a comedy, but it handles both the main character, Paige, and her family’s obsession with wrestling and wrestling’s over-the-top “melodrama in spandex” (as the movie itself calls it) with real sincerity. While I’m sure it would never be done on purpose, I could see a version of this movie that would inadvertently acquire a sort of sneering condescension or detached irony about its subject matter and some of its “goofier” elements. You see it all the time in cinematic references to soap operas, for example. Luckily, this movie avoids those traps and neither denies professional wrestling’s peculiarities nor pretends that it is anything less than it is.

Some of this undoubtedly comes from Stephen Merchant’s script. There will be something extremely familiar in the sensibilities of Fighting with My Family to anyone who has seen Merchant’s previous work. It is jocular, a little awkward, understated, and full of heart. It isn’t exactly uproariously funny, though. Despite being known as a comedy writer, Merchant’s solo work has never really gone for belly laughs. His most traditionally funny material was all made with Ricky Gervais: The Office (UK), Extras, An Idiot Abroad. In my opinion, their styles balanced each other out and made the whole better. Gervais without Merchant is too cynical and mean spirited for my taste. Merchant without Gervais is heartfelt and sweet but rarely laugh-out-loud funny. This persists in Fighting with My Family. Plenty of moments would elicit a light chuckle out of me but things are generally more amusing than downright funny.

This creates a comedic atmosphere that is more interested in telling a heartfelt story, with dollop of uncomfortable situations and a dash of British self-deprecation, rather than making a meal of its sassy protagonist and her off-kilter rise to WWE stardom. To be fair, there is no reason this movie has to be a comedy, although its premise and larger than life, wise-cracking central family nudge it in that direction. It is a true story and so there is an expectation of realism. This could justify steering the film away from seemingly contrived comedic moments that read as untruthful to the movie’s real life counterparts. However, Merchant, as both writer and director, sets a certain lightly comedic tone and once that tone is established there is an audience expectation of more funny moments, especially to offset Paige and her family’s more dramatic struggles in the pursuit of WWE stardom, that simply don’t appear.

Setting aside the lack of laughs, the only thing that really put me on edge was the very end. The movie is perfectly willing to acknowledge that wrestling is pre-arranged. The stunts are real but the fight outcomes are fixed. It doesn’t shy away from this fact or try to hide it. We live in an era where fans talk openly about Kayfabe and the movie reflects that. However, the end of the film is structured like a typical sports movie where our hero, the plucky underdog, overcomes the reigning champion in order to prove herself in the ring. Except both her and her competition knew it was going to go down like that, since presumably it had all been decided before anyone stepped into the ring. This bit of narrative dissonance, where the audience is asked to just temporarily forget that the outcome was fixed, bothered me. If they had set up her coming out moment more like an arts movie, where this was the performance that all of her life experience and training was building to, rather than a sports movie, where her win against the odds is positioned as her doing rather than the agreed upon and predetermined outcome, it could have accomplished the same effect without causing that narrative dissonance.

Ultimately, the movie does a competent job of telling an interesting story about an unusual outsider struggling to prove herself in the highest arena of the niche that, in large part, makes her unusual. It is light hearted and fun and has a few amusing moments but never really makes you laugh out loud. It was an entertaining and unironic plunge into a popular performance art in which I have next to no background, but ultimately is only an OK movie.

Would Recommend: If you love all things wrestling and want to see a true story about the road from amateur superfan to WWE super-stardom.

Would Not Recommend: If your prejudice towards professional wrestling as a “low” art will limit your ability to enjoy the movie.