Fighting with My Family review: Far more gripping than its subject matter might suggest

Dir: Stephen Merchant; Starring: Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Dwayne Johnson, Lena Headey, Vince Vaughn, Kim Matula, Stephen Merchant, Nick Frost. Cert 12A, 107 mins

“Wrestling is storytelling,” one character proclaims early on in Stephen Merchant’s rousing and unexpectedly charming comedy-drama. This is a film in which every move and feint can be guessed in advance. Its predictability doesn’t lessen its emotional impact in the slightest. As the wrestlers themselves make clear, there is a huge difference between a “fixed” fight and a “fake” one. The events depicted here feel “real” even if they rarely surprise us.

Merchant is drawing on a true story, one already told in Max Fisher’s equally entertaining 2012 Channel 4 documentary, The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family. This profiles the Knight family, who run their own makeshift organisation, The World Association of Wrestling, from a council house on an estate in Norwich. One member of the family did indeed make the transition from fighting at events in shabby, half-empty halls in Great Yarmouth to competing in the multimillion-dollar world of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) in the US.

The Norfolk settings are bound to put some audiences in mind of Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge, the hapless Norwich TV and radio presenter. The film has its share of Partridge-like moments – scenes involving blind wrestlers, training sessions in which boys inadvertently get erections (‘stiffies’) when grappling with women, and stories about fighters who take to the ring not realising that their genitals are hanging out of their spandex costumes. However, the very British irony is combined with a level of emotion you don’t encounter either in the world of Partridge or in the various comedies on which Merchant has collaborated with Ricky Gervais. This is as much a tearjerker as it is a farce. It has outstanding performances from the ever versatile Florence Pugh as Saraya and from Jack Lowden as her brother, Zak.

Merchant pays tribute to his source material with scenes in which the characters talk direct to camera, just as they did in the documentary. The family patriarch is Rowdy Ricky (Nick Frost), an ex-con who credits wrestling with saving him from a life of crime and GBH. His even more outspoken wife Julia “Sweet Saraya” (Lena Headey) was homeless and suicidal until she met Ricky. “Some people find religion but we found wrestling,” she explains. Their children Saraya and Zak are very close indeed. Saraya wasn’t much interested in wrestling initially but had to fill in when someone didn’t turn up for a bout and became hooked. She is the star of the family, a teen goth who dresses in black and bears a passing resemblance to one of the Addams Family. She has an effervescent personality but also knows how to roll with the punches. Zak is more reserved but talented and kind-hearted, driving around town in the family’s battered old van and looking among the street kids and delinquents for recruits for the family’s wrestling academy. The filmmakers do an excellent job of capturing their characters’ idiosyncrasies without patronising or caricaturing them.

The WWE’s talent scout Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) comes to the UK in search of new talent. Saraya and Zak are given trials. They meet Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson (the wrestler turned movie star who plays himself and also produced the movie).

Fighting with My Family may be a feelgood yarn which plays like a wish fulfilment fantasy, but it has plenty of grim moments along the way. The wrestlers face humiliation both inside and outside the ring on a near daily basis. We see one fall guy having to pick drawing pins out of his back. Another is asked in matter-of-fact fashion by Rowdy Ricky if he is prepared to be smashed in the head or the crotch with a heavy object during a fight. Rowdy Ricky shows him exactly how painful it will be. The wrestler takes the pain in his stride. It comes with the territory.

Hutch may be nicknamed “Sex Tape” (because he makes people famous), but his training methods are as brutal as those of the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket. He is looking for “that something extra” which will qualify a wrestler for the WWE shows, which are watched by millions on TV. New entrants need charisma and extreme athleticism.

At training camp in Florida, the British would-be star with pale, pasty skin and bad teeth looks very incongruous next to the tanned Americans. Back home in Norfolk, one sibling’s success provokes jealousy in the other. The family’s dream threatens to crumble. Matters briefly turn very dark. That, of course, is only to be expected. In triumphalist stories like this, there will always be adversity along the way.

Florence Pugh made her reputation as the scheming, crinoline-wearing, Victorian-era wife in costume drama Lady Macbeth and as one of the fey teenage school girls in The Falling. Both films are a very long way removed from the world of WWE shown here. Pugh, though, is completely convincing as the wrestler. She has all the moves in the ring and shows the same defiance, scruffy glamour and self-deprecating humour as the real life Saraya (aka Paige). Lowden, meanwhile, brings pathos to his role as the brother so obsessed with WWE that he forgets about his own family and friends.

Certain scenes feel very trite and predictable but the film gets you in a choke hold early on and won’t let you go. It is far more gripping than its subject matter might suggest. Who ever would believe a story about a wrestling family from Norwich could have quite such heart and resonance?