I wasn’t sure what to expect when I sat down to see Fighting with My Family. I knew it was a movie that somehow involved wrestling and that’s about it. I hadn’t even seen the trailer and I couldn’t tell anything from the audience. Different films bring different audience demographics and this one was all over the map. I’m not a wrestling fan or even a sports fan, there wasn’t much I could relate to in Fighting with My Family, but from the first scene, I could tell this was something different.
A former wrestler and his family make a living performing at small venues around the country while his kids dream of joining World Wrestling Entertainment.
The thing about Fighting with My Family is how real it felt. Everything was completely believable. The characters lived in a world that made sense and events bloomed naturally from that. There were so many perfect little details. If this were somehow based on a True Story, I would be zero percent surprised. Which means we had the wonderful chemistry between good writing and good acting where one compliments the other. Florence Pugh was also wonderful. Jack Lowden is a great actor and a very handsome man. Thank you for your Fan Service. But my favorite was easily Vince Vaughn (character and performance).
Fighting with My Family was 1 hour and 48 minutes, which is a perfect length. Even so, the pacing was nontraditional. There were spots where it dragged. There were also spots where I wasn’t sure why something was happening, which actually lends more credence to the notion that it’s based on real events – things happened that would have made sense if they slowly developed but instead had to meet the timeline of the film.
So is Fighting with My Family worth watching? Yes, especially if you like Professional Wrestling. It’s a tribute to the real skill and difficulty of the world behind the curtain of this sport. (‘it’s fixed, not fake’). While I don’t think I need to see it again, I would recommend it to anyone because it’s so well made and heartwarming.
Rating: [star rating=”3.5″]