Earlier this year we were all surprised about just how funny the film Instant Family was. Now the same thing has happened with Fighting With My Family. The story of a wrestler that comes from nothing and chases their dream – it sounds like a story we have heard a million times before. Only this isn’t just another wrestler – it is the story of Paige and the result is a feature film that mixes comedy and drama together amazingly well.
One of the stars of the film is the very, very funny Nick Frost and he is only too excited to talk about what led him to joining the cast. “I’d known Stephen (director Stephen Merchant) for awhile,” he explains. “Then I sat down to read the script and I thought it was funny and I loved the fact that there was some good wrestling in there to. I did see the documentary before I read the script and find myself thinking after I watched that ‘yeah I am definitely in.’ It is just the story of the Knight family who live in Norwich, the whole family are wrestlers and have been forever. Ricky is a reformed hard-man-stroke-gangster, he has the love of his life by his side and this is the story of their kids and their struggle. What I find interesting about wrestling, especially English wrestling was that it seemed to be a dwindling pastime. But yeah I found this story interesting and it was just ripe for what Dwayne (Johnson) and their company wanted to do with it. They wanted to tell a story of a family and they wanted to tell it with a lot of heart and passion and with all the things that go along with that, and the script was just really nice and it was funny and I knew that Lena was going to do it, that was a big draw and then there was the young cast Jack, Florence… when I say young cast I mean Jack and Florence because Lena and I ain’t so young.”
“I think though that at the beginning I didn’t realise just how ambitious it was going to be,” he says as the discussion turns to the scale of the film. “But I am happy that they decided to do that because they didn’t take any of the action away but the heart is still there and the film is funny. What everyone in the Knight family and what everyone who is in that cottage industry does is all about the audience. The audience needs to go away feeling that they have just seen two, four, six great warriors athletically smash each other up for an hour and a half. And then here with the characters you find that you want these characters to do well. You meet a group of people at the beginning and they are all different characters and some you may like and some you may not like. But then something bad happens, they pick themselves up and then you find yourself rooting for them to win – that is what you want you want these people to win. It kind of mirrors wrestling itself in a way because you want the good guys to win. You don’t want the baddies to win, you want the goodies to win and I don’t want to give too much away – but the goodies win, and that is a good feeling it makes people feel nice.”
To sum up the film quickly Frost says “It is funny but it has great action. But I would like people to take away that nice, warm I’ve-just-eaten-a-bowl-of-porridge feeling after they have just watched a film about a family that has that strength and relationship… and above all that warmth.”
Fighting With My Family opens in cinemas this Thursday.
[imdb show=”transparent” data=”detailed”]tt6513120[/imdb]
