Fighting with my Family is a biopic about the World Wrestling Entertainment Diva wrestler Saraya-Jade Bevis, also known as “Paige.” The movie follows her life leading up to her WWE fame and how it impacted her and her family.
I don’t remember much other than that.
Have you ever seen a movie or piece of art that honestly leaves no real effect on you? The movie ends. The credits roll. You pick up your drink and popcorn bin and leave the theater. As you walk down the hall toward the door, you think to yourself, “What did I just watch? I don’t remember.”
Fighting with my Family is that movie. A movie that leaves no impression on its audience. It is the bane of a reviewer’s existence—a perfectly okay movie.
When I go see a movie, I hope for one of two things—either the movie is very bad or the movie is very good. A movie that finds a middle ground such as this one is the most boring a movie can be. With a bad movie, I can get angry about how it is destroying the fabric of cinema itself or laugh at how widely the director missed the mark on the most fundamental elements of storytelling. With a good movie, I can revel in how masterfully each choice that the director made makes the movie 10 times more unique than any other movie with a similar plot. But a movie like this, it just leaves me with nothing.
I paid $9.99 for nothing.
I guess the one thing that holds the movie to a slightly higher standard is the performances. Most of the actors in this film seem well-acquainted with their characters. All the performances felt natural, and the chemistry between the characters was believable. Stephen Merchant, director and writer of the movie, had a funny little cameo that would extract a couple of chuckles from the audience.
The writing was also nice with some believable dialogue. Every time a character spoke, it felt like it would be something that would truly be said by that character. Each scene felt like it mattered to the overall story and characters. The whole movie felt believable.
But is believable all I want?
I understand that with a biopic, that is pretty much the goal of the movie, but it feels like all of the creativity this movie could have had was sucked out with a vacuum hose. The whole thing was just so formulaic that anyone could predict the ending or even the next scene.
This movie scares me.
Seriously, I’m scared that more movies like this are being made. It seems like every biopic made recently (I’m looking at you, Bohemian Rhapsody) is getting more and more formulaic. The producers making the movies are getting better at pleasing the widest audience possible with the least amount of work. It’s the same reason why people say that all pop music sounds the same. Producers are getting better at figuring out what people want and are spoon-feeding it to them.
What’s wrong with giving the people what they want?
I suppose there is nothing inherently wrong with giving people what they want, but I want to be shown something that I didn’t know I wanted. I want the director to cook me up a spicy meatball of a movie, even though I ordered a hamburger of a movie, and make it so good that I leave the meal realizing that I actually was craving that spicy meatball my entire life. I want a meatball that I can devote my life to studying and analyzing, and, with every time I eat it, I notice something different.
Fighting with my Family is a painfully average movie that satisfies every need in the most average and efficient way possible. This movie is one big awkward family dinner.
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