Taglines: Meet an outsider who changed the game.
Young Saraya Bevis (Tori Ellen Ross) and her brother Zak ( Thomas Whilley) are fighting over the remote. Paige is watching Charmed, but Zak wants to put on wrestling. The two begin to fight until they are interrupted by their father, Patrick (Nick Frost) – who instead of stopping them, gives them better wrestling techniques.
Later, Saraya (Florence Pugh) is 18-years old. She and Zak (Jack Lowden) teach wrestling classes to kids at their family’s wrestling gym and also perform as part of an amateur wrestling league run by Patrick and their mother Julia (Lena Headey) – both of whom also perform in the league. Soon, Zak’s girlfriend Courtney becomes pregnant, and the Bevis family has Courtney’s parents over for dinner.
Zak pleads with his family to tone it down and not curse and be vulgar, but their personalities still come through, shocking Courtney’s parents with tales of how Patrick used to be a criminal and Julia lived on the streets. They are especially disturbed to learn that Saraya and Zak’s brother Roy is currently in prison for a violent crime. During the dinner, the family receives a phone call that Zak and Saraya’s submission tape was reviewed by the WWE, and they have been selected to come to the local tryout. They’re ecstatic.
As the siblings enter the tryouts, they encounter The Rock (Dwayne Johnson as himself). They are completely starstruck and ask him for advice. He yells at them – but this ends up being part of his pep talk. The siblings go into the training run by Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn). Saraya chooses the stage name “Paige,” named after the character from Charmed. At the end of the tryouts, Paige is the only person selected to move forward to NXT in Florida. Saraya runs after Hutch, saying he has to take her brother. He says no, and she says that she won’t go without him. Zak begs her to reconsider, to do it for the family. Saraya gives in, and her family bids her a tearful farewell at the airport as she leaves to enter training.
In Florida, Saraya/Paige feels out of place and lonely. The other women are all models or cheerleader types, most of whom have never really wrestled seriously before. She puts her all into training but is lonely and exhausted. She tries to express to her parents how tough it is, but they’ve already begun making big money for their gym solely off of Paige making it to NXT. Meanwhile, Zak is not doing well at home, depressed and jealous of Paige. He calls Hutch and begs for another shot, but Hutch tells him to let it go. He becomes angrier and more troubled, ignoring his wife and child and abandoning his young students at the gym. Paige calls him continuously, but he ignores her calls.
Fighting with My Family is a 2019 biographical sports comedy-drama film written and directed by Stephen Merchant. Based on the 2012 documentary The Wrestlers: Fighting with My Family by Max Fisher, it depicts the career of English professional wrestler Paige as she makes her way up WWE, while also following her brother Zak Zodiac, as he struggles with his failure to achieve similar success. Florence Pugh and Jack Lowden star as Paige and Zodiac respectively, alongside Lena Headey, Nick Frost, Vince Vaughn, and Dwayne Johnson, with the latter also acting as producer.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 28 January 2019, and was theatrically released in the United States on 14 February 2019. It received positive reviews from critics, particularly for the performances of Pugh and Vaughn. It was also a commercial success, grossing $41.5 million worldwide against a budget of $11 million.
Fighting with My Family (2019)
Directed by: Stephen Merchant
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Lena Headey, Florence Pugh, Jack Lowden, Vince Vaughn, Stephen Merchant, Nick Frost, Kim Matula, Aqueela Zoll, Hannah Rae, Eli Jane, Chloe Csengery, Jill Buchanan
Screenplay by: Stephen Merchant
Production Design by: Nick Palmer
Cinematography by: Remi Adefarasin
Film Editing by: Nancy Richardson
Costume Design by: Matthew Price
Set Decoration by: Ellie Pash
Art Direction by: Gareth Cousins, Christina Eunji Kim
Music by: Vik Sharma
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for crude and sexual material, language throughout, some violence and drug content.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release Date: February 14, 2019 (United States), March 1, 2019 (United Kingdom)
Visits: 48
