dir. by Michael Showalter
written by Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon*
Romantic comedies have a reputation for being contrived and artificial. They're associated with a very familiar set of tropes and plot structures and are often filled with silly reasons that the main couple needs to remain apart until the end. These movies are popular, but they're also frequently regarded as fluffy, disposable, and mindless.
The Big Sick is different. Unlike the standard Hollywood romcom, its twists and turns are based on reality. It's an authentic story in a genre which is so often phony, a funny movie but also a heartfelt story with a melancholy undertone. What its protagonists go through isn't easy, but those tribulations are not only believable, they feel true. It's that authenticity which makes the film feel so genuine and which gives it all of its emotional power. It's not packed with gags or comic scenarios. Instead, it's funny because it's witty and honest, and it's great because it's willing to take itself a little seriously.
The film chronicles the real-life story of how Kumail Nanjiani (playing himself) met his future wife, Emily (played by Zoe Kazan). When Emily interrupts Kumail at a comedy show with a cheer of "woo!," Kumail informs her that a positive comment is still a heckle, and the two establish an immediate connection. However, neither are willing to commit due to being busy with work and school respectively, and in addition Kumail's family insists upon him marrying a Pakistani Muslim, to the extent that his mom repeatedly invites women over in an attempt to arrange a relationship. Still, he and Emily grow more and more fond of each other, until one day, Emily is hospitalized and placed in a medically-induced coma. Visiting Emily in the hospital leads Kumail to meet Emily's parents, Beth (Holly Hunter) and Terry (Ray Romano), and their shared experiences affect Kumail's outlook.
The Big Sick starts off conventionally. After meeting at the show, Kumail and Emily date for a while, and the film spends a lot of time simply showing their growing relationship. This is the part where the film hits the most formula beats, but it's also the part where it can get away with them the most easily, and the first act-and-a-half is livened up by Kumail's relationships with his family and with his coworkers. The former provides a contrast between the traditional marriage which the family wants and Kumail's actual relationship with a white woman, and the latter supplies an additional layer of conflict with the presence of a scout for the Montreal Comedy Festival.
Furthermore, these earlier scenes are kept afloat because of the charisma of the performers and the film's hilarious script. Kumail included a couple scenes of his standup, including a repeated joke about a street drug called "cheese," and while these are consistently funny, even funnier are the interpersonal interactions. Sometimes, this is because of the dialogue, which is often hilarious but naturalistic enough that each of these funny moments feels realistically stumbled upon, and in other cases, this is because of sympathetically awkward situations, like one especially clever gag involving Touch ID. Even at their most uncomfortable, there's humour in just how awkward and surprising some of these situations are, and the film never becomes unpleasant to watch.
Just as importantly, the relationships between each of the characters are nuanced and well-observed. Kumail and Emily have a lot of chemistry with each other, and yet both introduce barriers, especially Kumail in one of the movie's most emotionally affecting scenes. Meanwhile, Beth and Terry are experiencing marital issues, which the audience is left to infer for a good majority of the film, and even when they first start spending time with Kumail, they're guarded towards him, and only let that guard down due to their shared anxiety about Emily's health and their mutual efforts to escape from it.
For an ostensible romantic comedy, that's all fairly dark subject matter, but that's what makes the movie so refreshing and even poignant. Chunks of The Big Sick are sad and downbeat, emphasizing failure and frustration, and nearly every relationship in the film either starts tense or becomes tense as the story progresses. Knowledge of Kumail and Emily's real-life marriage spoils the ending, but the way it plays out in the movie is ambiguous and even unhappy in a lot of ways, and that's perhaps the most refreshing thing about the film. It's not a feel-good story designed around specific beats and a happy ending. It's honest and confessional, and the various barriers and turns of fortune feel earned and, more importantly, real. As with many movies produced by Judd Apatow, The Big Sick runs for an ungainly 2 hours, but every minute of that feels needed and earned.
With an authentic, emotional narrative and a hilarious script, The Big Sick is a refreshing change of pace for the romantic comedy genre. Some of its laughs are bigger than others, but it's consistently inventive, delightfully free from contrivance, and contains no small degree of poignancy alongside its romance and laughs. It has a broad emotional range, and yet its tonal changes are subtle and deftly navigated. Most of all, it's just honest - not just about the complexities and challenges of life, but about Kumail's own insecurities and faults. It's funny, yes, but it's also so much more than that.
9/10
* Writer-driven movies like this make me reconsider just listing the director.
+ Hilarious script.
+ Nuanced, profound character interactions.
+ Realistic, believable narrative.
+ Dark, poignant subject matter.
- Early parts are relatively formulaic.
- Largely unstylized.
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Todd Throndson
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