Everyone knows wrestling is fixed, stage for p ure entertainment, but behind the costumes, the death matches and the five moves of doom are real people. “Fighting with My Family,” a new comedy written and directed by Stephen Merchant, dropkicks one real life story from the ring to the big screen.
Norwich England native Saraya-Jade Bevis (Florence Pugh) comes from a wrestling family. Her parents Ricky (Nick Frost) and Julia (Lena Headey) a.k.a. Rowdy Ricky and Sweet Saraya and siblings all throw down in the ring. When WWE trainer Hutch Morgan (Vince Vaughn) offers Saraya-Jade, known as Britani, and brother Zodiac Zak (Jack Lowden) a chance to audition it looks like they’re on the verge of going big time.
Well, at least one of them is.
After receiving some backstage advice from The Rock (who is also a producer on the film) and trying out, Hutch only calls one name, Saraya-Jade. Switching her name to the more American sounding Paige (inspired by the Rose McGowan character on “Charmed”) she begins in a training camp in Orlando where she will be assessed to see if she has the right stuff for the WWE. She’s an outsider who must fight for every win, both in and out of the ring. “Don’t worry about being the next me,” Says The Rock. “Be the first you.”
There are suplexes, trash talk galore, likeable actors like Nick Frost Lena Hadley and Vince Vaughn but it isn’t the wrestling moves and sports movie clichés that sell this movie. It’s the film’s beating heart, Florence Pugh, who plays Paige as a mix of empathy, ambition and self-doubt. Her path is a difficult one, from her brother’s jealousy to American audiences taunting her because of her jet-black hair, English accent and piercings. “Come on Ozzy Osbourne! Sing something!” We’ve seen this underdog character before, but by the time she says, “I am a freak. This belongs to the misfits who don’t belong,” it’s hard not to call a TKO on Pugh’s performance.
“Fighting with My Family” is about wrestling but like all good sports movies it isn’t just about what happens in the inevitable game or match at the end of the picture. It is a more universal story about outcasts who create community through sport and heart combined with the kind of “soap opera in spandex” storytelling that has made wrestling so popular.
Richard sits in on the CJAD Montreal morning show with host Andrew Carter to talk about the fourth season of “Pop Life” and two new movies coming to theatres, “How to Train Your Dragon: the Hidden World” and the charming “Fighting With My Family.”
Richard and CP24 anchor George Lagogianes have a look at the weekend’s new movies, “Doctor Strange,” the fourteenth film in the Marvel Universe, “Trolls,” the return of a 1970s pop culture phenomenon, Andrew Garfield as real-life WWII hero and pacifist Desmond Doss in “Hacksaw Ridge” and the Iggy and the Stooges documentary “Gimme Danger.”
Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, Benedict Cumberbatch in “Doctor Strange,” the fourteenth film in the Marvel Universe, “Trolls,” the return of a 1970s pop culture phenomenon with Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick, Andrew Garfield as real-life WWII hero and pacifist Desmond Doss in “Hacksaw Ridge” and the Iggy and the Stooges documentary “Gimme Danger.”
“Hacksaw Ridge,” a new war film from director Mel Gibson, is much like the man himself; blustery, loud, occasionally profane and with a muddled moral core.
The film opens with grim imagery, soldiers with their faces blown off, engulfed in flames, before jumping back in time sixteen years to tell the tale of real-life pacifist Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield). Growing up in podunk Virginia Desmond is a high spirited boy who almost kills his brother during a play fight spun out of control. When his mother (Rachel Griffiths) tells him the most egregious sin of all is the taking of another person’s life, he allows the potent words to sink in and take root.
Later, after a whirlwind romance of the, “Today I met the girl I’m going to marry,” type he enlists in the army, despite the protests of his WWI vet father (Hugo Weaving and his fiancée (Teresa Palmer). A conscientious objector, Desmond refuses any kind of weapons training, insisting instead to go into battle as a medic. In boot camp his fellow cadets treat him like a pariah while his superiors (Vince Vaughn and Sam Worthington) threaten him with a court martial. “I’m not off up above,” he says pointing to his head. “I just believe what I believe.”
“Hacksaw Ridge” is the kind of movie that presents the main character as an underdog, but you know by the end of the film someone will say, “That crazy SOB was the bravest man I ever met,” or words to the effect. And so it goes. On Hacksaw Ridge, an impossibly tall cliff on the Japanese island of Okinawa, his mettle is tested when his platoon is attacked and overwhelmed. Without firing a shot, or even touching a gun, Desmond dodges death in the form of Japanese soldiers, bullets and grenades to bring aid to his colleagues.
This is a morality tale about a man whose noble intentions are misunderstood by everyone. Based on real events, it nonetheless has the feel of Hollywood fiction. Perhaps it’s because of our cynical times, but stories of the indomitable spirit seem to take on a corny edge no matter how much gruesome stuff—legs turn in the hamburger meat, rats eating corpses—the director uses to paint the screen.
That may be unfair, but there is an undeniable aw-shucks vibe that permeates the air. Gibson clearly respects the moral high ground his main character takes, but allows Garfield to play Doss as a hokey cliché, with one hand on the bible and a goofy grin plastered on his face. It’s amiable enough work but when the “hellfire of combat” kicks in he tends to get lost amid the action.
And there is a lot of action. By the time the movie shifts location to the titular warzone Gibson goes full tilt with skilfully shot, hardcore battle scenes. For a film about pacifism he doesn’t hold back, bringing his usual subtlety (think “Braveheart,” “The Passion of the Christ” or “Apocalypto”) to scenes of dismemberment and even a glimpse of ritual Seppuku. It’s wild and woolly and often very effective. A slow speed chase sequence in one of the cliff’s tunnels has tension and a couple of good jump scares. It’s solid filmmaking, if just a little safe. There’s nothing here as oddball or challenging as the use of arcane languages in his last two films or “Passion’s” female Satan. Instead he’s made a conventional, if somewhat gory inspirational biopic that suggests, come for the old time religion, stay for the blood and guts.
It’s hard to separate Mel Gibson from his films. “Hacksaw Ridge,” despite its lack of his usual eccentric flourishes, still feels like it could only be made by a man torn between deeply held faith and a wild side that sometimes runs free.
I have a brother but he’s not my bro, at least by the contemporary definition. My sibling and I are biologically brothers but neither of us fall into what the NPR Codeswitch blog described as the four rudimentary characteristics of “bro-iness”— jockish, dudely, stoner-ish and preppy.
There are as many ways to define bros and brahs as there are bros and brahs at your local frat house. Oxford Dictionary writer Katherine Connor Martin sums it up simply as “a conventional guy’s guy who spends a lot of time partying with other young men like himself.” The urban dictionary isn’t quite as elegant, describing bros as ”obnoxious partying males who are often seen at college parties… [standing] around holding a red plastic cup waiting for something exciting to happen so they can scream something that demonstrates how much they enjoy partying”
This weekend Zac Efron and Adam DeVine play brothers who are also bros in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Based on the real-life exploits of Mike and Dave Stangle, the guys get out-broed at their sister’s Hawaiian wedding by broettes Tatiana and Alice (Aubrey Plaza and Anna Kendrick).
In real life Mike, Dave, Tatiana and Alice are the kind of people it might be fun to hang out with before ten o’clock at night, before the tequila shots and samplings from the mystery medicine cabinet have taken effect. After that, all bets are off. Luckily in Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, like so many bro movies before it, the screen separates us and we can sit back and observe them like cultural anthropologists, as if we’re studying animals in a zoo.
Hollywood has long had a bromance with bros. Lately in movies like Neighbors and Dirty Grandpa Efron has made a career of playing dim witted frat boys but to find the proto bros you have to go back to 1940. Starting with Road to Singapore Bob Hope and Bing Crosby cocktailed and adlibbed their way through seven Road movies playing two slightly skeezy men with boatloads of bravado and an unbreakable bond—at least until love interest Dorothy Lamour showed up.
National Lampoon’s Animal House was the next landmark of bro-cinema. From toga parties to food fights and doing The Worm on the dance floor, it’s a politically incorrect classic that celebrates the best and worst of bro culture.
A 1996 movie gave us the bro with a million catchphrases like “Vegas, baby,” “wingman,” “beautiful babies” and “you’re so money.” As Trent in Swingers Vince Vaughn gave a voice and brocabulary to a generation of bros. Jon Favreau wrote the script but many of the sayings came directly from the lips of his best friends and co-stars Vaughn and Ron Livingston.
No look at bro-cinema would be complete without a nod toward Will Ferrell. The comedian has broed out on screen many times but Old School’s Frank the Tank, a character who unravels after his wife leaves him, is King Bro. When he’s not doing beer bong hits (“Once it hits your lips, it’s so good!”) or streaking he lets his freak flag fly as one of the most over-the-top bros ever seen on screen.
Dean Wormer’s classic scolding from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son,” doesn’t seem to apply, at least at the movies.
Richard reviews “Chappie,” “Unfinished Business,” “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and “Kidnapping Mr. Heineken” with “Canada AM” host Marci Ien.
“Unfinished Business” is a good title for a movie that feels fragmentary. It has a beginning, middle and end, so it technically qualifies as a story, but its reliance on mawkish sentimentality and non-sequiturs to forward the plot and an overload of narration to tie the loose ends together leave it feeling unfinished, unsatisfying and worst of all, unfunny.
Vince Vaughn plays Dan Trunkman a consultant who impulsively left a high powered job rather than take a pay cut. Now in business for himself—“I only have two employees,” he says, “one’s too old and one’s too young.”—he’s on the cusp of the biggest contract of his career. The oddball trio—Trunkman, Timothy McWinters (Tom Wilkenson) and the unlikely named Mike Pancake (Dave Franco)—travel to Portland, Maine in what should be a routine trip to close the deal.
But because this is a Vince Vaughn screwball comedy there is nothing routine about the trip.
Upon arrival he finds himself in a Davey and Goliath situation as his former boss, Chuck Portnoy (Sienna Miller), is pulling out all the stops to snag the business for the multinational company Dynamic Progressive Systems. Out gunned and on the verge of bankruptcy, Trunkman pulls out all the stops by flying to Berlin to meet with the top brass and show them a good time in hopes of winning their goodwill and the business. Instead they end up in a tiresome tour of Germany’s fetish bars, rave scene and unisex saunas.
“Unfinished Business” in its current unfinished-feeling state will make you wonder what could have happened if someone like Judd Apatow had been allowed to have a crack at the same material. Apatow is a master at finding the balance between heartfelt social commentary and socially inappropriate fratboy jokes. It’s the tone director Ken Scott, in his sophomore effort with Vaughn after last year’s charming-but-slight “Delivery Man,” seems to be going for but falls short on. Way short.
The gags mostly involve poking fun at Pancake’s reduced intellect, gay panic and tone-deaf sex jokes. It is occasionally amusing to see the usually oh-so-serious actor Tom Wilkinson let it rip as a randy old man and Nick Frost make the best of a bad situation, but for the most part the laughs feel like leftovers from a rejected “Hangover” script.
As a look at modern life it hits on some hot button topics, like bullying and providing for a family in a world where full time employment can be elusive, but even the serious stuff, meant to give the movie some heart, veers to the saccharine side and is about as insightful as a philosophical debate on twitter.
Ultimately the failure of “Unfinished Business” falls on Vaughn’s desk. He’s the boss at the center of the story but not even his natural charisma can salvage this very bad day at the office.
Everyone knows wrestling is fixed, stage for p ure entertainment, but behind the costumes, the death matches and the five moves of doom are real people. “Fighting with My Family,” a new comedy written and directed by Stephen Merchant, dropkicks one real life story from the ring to the big screen.
