'Big Sick' a Chicago-set love story of humor, stinging truth and romance
Despite its pandemic-sounding title, “The Big Sick” delivers a fresh, funny, endearing and surprisingly emotional story of romance and survival, not necessarily in that order.
This movie ranks as another one of Judd Apatow's better, bluntly humanistic comedies, and signifies that director Michael Showalter has just pole-vaulted onto Hollywood's A-list since his less ambitious 2016 release “Hello, My Name is Doris.”
“The Big Sick” roughly traces the true story of how struggling Pakistani stand-up comedian/actor Kumail Nanjiani and writer Emily V. Gordon met in Chicago and fell in love, and how their parents dealt with the social and cultural implications of the couple's mixed-race, Muslim/Christian relationship.
Nanjiani and Gordon wrote the screenplay, so their characters and dialogue come laced with hilarious, often stinging truth.
Nanjiani, star of HBO's “Silicon Valley,” plays himself, and the appealingly quirky Zoe Kazan plays Emily, a smart and sassy writer more than capable of verbally fencing with Kumail, whom she meets after heckling him at a Chicago comedy club.
They hit it off, and he takes her to his apartment in his Uber car. They explore their common interests in horror movies and have a good time getting to know each other.
Later, when she gets up to go, Kumail begs her to stay. They've only had sex one time.
“I'm just not that kind of girl,” Emily burbles. “I only have sex once on a first date.”
Kumail never mentions Emily to his traditional parents, especially his cagey mother (Zenobia Shroff), who keeps inviting attractive, eligible Pakistani women to drop by the house during dinner.
Soon after Emily and Kumail break up, she comes down with a mysterious infection so severe that doctors put her into a medically induced coma.
Then, Emily's testy North Carolina parents, Beth (Holly Hunter) and Terry (Ray Romano), arrive at the hospital. They don't like Kumail and wonder why he keeps hanging around them.
At any moment, “The Big Sick” could lapse into eye-rolling, cloying sitcom cliches. This movie dodges every one of them.
Gordon and Nanjiani create characters and dialogue so specific and consistently surprising, we wonder what will happen next.
Beth and Terry evolve into much more than stock rom-com characters. Their own festering relationship issues spill into the Emily/Kumail romance, edging this film into a complex, comic work of rare maturity, intelligence and carefully observed emotional authenticity.
Nanjiani proves he can handle a leading role. (To twist a quote from Cary Grant, “He plays himself to perfection!”)
It's Hunter's grounded performance - an exquisitely layered character tested by life's challenges - that anchors “The Big Sick” with strength and resolve seldom seen in Hollywood rom-coms.
“The Big Sick” ultimately is about romance and survival. Terry and Beth's marriage survives. Emily survives. Through humor, Kumail survives both economically as a comic, and socially as an American Muslim.
At lunch, Terry awkwardly asks Kumail what he thought of 9/11.
“It was a tragedy,” Kumail replies. “We lost 19 of our best men.” This Pakistani comedian has chutzpah.
“The Big Sick”
★ ★ ★ ★
Starring: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher
Directed by: Michael Showalter
Other: An Amazon Studios release. Rated R for language, sexual references. 119 minutes