Fighting with My Family will make you submit

When you think of WWE, formerly the World Wrestling Federation, lots of things come to mind. Violence, spectacle, noise, extravagance, action, and so on. The WWE is superhero comics come to life in its larger than reality offering, but one thing you don’t normally associate with the spandex clad warriors is heart, or love, or warmth, or affection.

Yet these are the values at the heart of Fighting with My Family which demonstrates the soft power of this multibillion-dollar enterprise. Of course, it is relentlessly on brand, it is a WWE film after all, but writer-director Stephen Merchant has slipped some human values under the radar in this simple but heartfelt story.

The WWE with its world of bad guys (heels) and clean-cut heroes (babyfaces) loves an underdog story and this may be the best of them all. It is the true story of the Knight family, who lived a life of borderline villainy in a Norwich council estate until wrestling saves them. They have their own tatty franchise – the WAW – and dad Ricky (Nick Frost) and mum Julia (Lena Headey) run the shows and their son Zak (Jack Lowden) is the star. However, when an opponent doesn’t turn up his sister Saraya (Florence Pugh) gets in the ring to save the family from financial ruin. She is a huge success and becomes a star in their very small pond.

Ricky has been pestering the WWE for a shot for his kids and when the big show comes to London, they get a try-out. Surprisingly they want Saraya and not Zak.

This is pretty much where the Channel 4 documentary on which this film is based left them, but this is also where the film gets interesting. The story focuses on both siblings; Saraya in her fish out of water existence in pro wrestling, and Zak having to deal with losing the only shot he had of making something of himself and his imminently arriving new family.

Both Lowden and Pugh are excellent and completely convincing. The real star for me is a wonderful script from Merchant which avoids the clichés but is full of beautiful character moments. There is genuine warmth to this script which informs the performances and makes sure that the film is often surprisingly moving.

The disconnect between the surface glitz of Florida and the hardscrabble streets of Norwich – which is where the heart of the film lies – makes for compelling viewing. It also provides a solid grounding for both Zak and Saraya’s ambition. Like The Simpsons, the Knight family may be dysfunctional, but their love for each other is unconditional.

The support from Frost and Headey is equally good but Merchant allows them to provide a frame in which Pugh and Lowden can shine. Great things are predicted for both and this is a major calling card for them.

Obviously there has to be Transatlantic appeal and Dwayne Johnson – one of the co-producers – lends his clout by stepping back in time to his earlier incarnation of The Rock. Vince Vaughn, who is getting better and better as a character actor with every movie, does a nice turn as the tough but fair wrestling coach who can make Soraya a star.

Fighting with My Family is a film which is full of sentiment without ever being sentimental, a neat trick to pull off, and shows that even in the fictional world of professional wrestling there is still room for real dreams to come true.