Movie Review : Miguel Wants to Fight (2023)
Growing up as a young man in a small, working class town in the nineties meant primarily two things : you had to at least pretend to enjoy the music of Metallica and you were as respected as the number of other young men you could theoretically beat in a fist fight. Those rules were extremely rigid and unfortunate for ninety percent of us, but they were the rules. Social discourse has evolved since, but small, working class towns stay mostly the same as we can observe in charming indie teen comedy Miguel Wants to Fight.
Although Metallica isn't even discussed in Miguel Wants to Fight, the plight of young Miguel, (Tyler Dean Flores), the son of local boxing coach, starts when his group of friends get involved in an altercation over a basketball game. They scrap it out valiantly even if our boy Miguel is pathologically unable to throw hands. Frustrated by his incapability to be violent when it matters, he announces to his friends that he wants to pick a fight. It doesn't really matters with who, he just wants to test himself.
Masculinity, Rites of Passage and Other Miserable Bullshit
Miguel Wants to Fight is a pretty straightforward proposition. It's a coming-of-age movie about a young man who carries the weight of social expectations in spite of his painfully obvious difference. Miguel wants to prove his toughness and loyalty to his group of friends, family and environment at large even though he's a peaceful, lovable goof who's into anime and whatnot. Whatever he does and wherever he looks, Miguel keeps being sent the same message that it's desirable to be strong and he wants to be desirable.
Because he's a kid and kids desperately want to be loved above everything else. That’s what makes Miguel Wants to Fight such a funny movie in a nostalgic, heartbreaking way. What Miguel likes is the idea of the fighter. The strong, courageous man who stands up for his beliefs and his loved ones. He’s bombarded with that idea, whether it’s through the fictional characters he loves or via his friends and family. But being a fighter is a chicken-or-the-egg thing. You have to fight in order to become a fighter and not the opposite.
A lot of the humour in Miguel Wants to Fight is derived from our boy not being able to hurt a fly. There's a particularly uproarious scene where Miguel resorts to verbal violence in order to attack his foe, but he's even bad at that. The poor kid is so obsessed with proving himself and being "a man" that he totally forgets to be himself in the process and, another chicken-or-the-egg thing, you have to figure out who you are before you can figure out what kind of man you want to be. Men make themselves miserable like that.
I've been there and unlike Miguel, it took me more than a week to figure it out. So, it hit close to home.
Diversity Without Making a Fuss About It
Miguel Wants to Fight was written by two guys I love for reasons completely alien to cinema : Jason Concepcion and Shea Serrano. Two ex-contributors to Bill Simmons' The Ringer, a website I visited daily before the pandemic and not at all since. I was deliriously happy to see their name in the writing credits for two reason : a) they’re awesome storytellers and b) they’re different. They’re media-savvy, Latin-American dudes and they do NOT want to get hired by Disney to work on a Star Wars movie.
That means they don’t give a fuck about trying to appeal to a particular market. Jason and Shea's primary concern is to tell the best story they possibly can. So, they do exactly just that. Although it encroaches just a little bit into the stereotypical underdog story territory, it feels so good to have such a fresh perspective on familiar narratives. I don’t think you see a white person until two thirds of Miguel Wants to Fight and it's not before I noticed it that I realized how good it felt to actually go somewhere else.
Miguel Wants to Fight is not some sweeping statement about racism or a movie that celebrates a different heritage. It’s one of the same stories we've been telling ourselves for decades as a society, but only from another perspective, involving people from another background that are usually not involved in stories like this unless they’re some kind of one-dimensional antagonist. I cannot tell you how fucking good it felt. To me, it opens a whole new world of possibilities in storytelling and we should embrace it.
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I got a kick out of Miguel Wants to Fight. It's a relatively discreet Hulu exclusive that was done on a low-budget and that relies on the strength of its screenplay and the spirited interpretation of up-and-coming actors. So, it's probably not going to change the way you think about anything, but give it a chance. It's a genuinely good time, it has "a thing" of its own that it delivers gracefully and it has heart. It's not some shit produce a conglomerate wants to sell you. I mean, what else do you want out of your entertainment?
