When Saraya Knight and her brother Zak are shown tussling as kids, their parents intervene—to correct the chokehold to make it more effective. Their home proves to be a charming atmosphere, where the parents, former-convict and current teddy bear Ricky (Nick Frost) and force of nature Julia (Lena Headey), love each other deeply. The family shares this positive atmosphere in their wrestling gym and indie wrestling league in their working-class English town, where they teach a band of excitable young kids how to pin, bounce off the ropes, etc. The two stars are the now-grown Knight children, Saraya (Florence Pugh), her jet-black hair and lip ring as definitive as her shyness and shortness, and the slightly hot-headed Zac (Jack Lowden). The Knight clan sees each other as equals, and when they do fight, it’s the good kind.
One of the film's funniest scenes is early on, when the Knights meet the parents of Kirsten (Aqueela Zoll), Zac’s girlfriend. With Kirsten’s dad played by the comparably demure Merchant, the Knight family are true bulls in a china shop of delicate upper-class niceties. To watch Merchant interact with them is especially funny, while highlighting how this family has their own language, and that they can’t help but be themselves. Most of all, they’re proud of where they’ve come from. It makes for a very warming ensemble comedy, the quartet’s chemistry making a vivid nest that Saraya soon leaves when she gets a shot at professional wrestling.
Saraya's steady ascent to WWE stardom with blood, sweat, tears, and personal branding (where she changes her stage name from Britani to Paige) then presents Merchant with a narrative challenge he doesn’t entirely pin down—how do you show a character’s progress arc in an industry where everything is fixed, not faked? He finds a solution in part by not forgetting about Zac when he doesn’t make the cut, and putting a lot of dramatic screen-time into Paige’s weaknesses—that she isn’t as strong as some of the other women, which her coach Hutch (played with tough love by Vince Vaughn) reminds her about. Worst of all, she gets stage fright when it comes to the essential act of talking trash in the ring. Pugh and Lowden’s full-bodied dramatic performances express the complete frustration and isolation within these shortcomings, representing hard-working people who are tempted to give up on a dream for many reasons. This eventually makes for moments in which the film, as unabashedly formulaic as it is, can be genuinely inspiring.
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