Review - The Big Sick (15)

Your driver will be ready as soon as he puts on his pants.

The Big Sick is based on a true story from the life of stand-up comedian and comedy actor Kumail Nanjiani. That Nanjiani co-wrote and stars as himself in the film, only adds to the poignancy of that story's telling. Romantic comedy drama is a difficult combination to pull off. Here all the elements are present in great spadefuls, and they combine to wonderful effect.

Kumail, from a Pakistani immigrant family, is plying his trade at a Chicago comedy club when he meets psychology student Emily. The romantic sparks are instant and hot, and while both of them have reasons to tread carefully - she's been burned from past experience, he's burdened by familial pressure to marry a Pakistani girl - they go where passion leads. The immediate results are funny and affecting, but inevitably their burgeoning relationship runs into crisis. Not any old crisis - a bizarre double-whammy of a crisis that might be too much for an audience to swallow, if it hadn't actually happened. Kumail finds himself tangling with Emily's parents in unique circumstances, while trying to deal with the expectations of his own family.

The Big Sick is produced by Judd Apatow and achieves the same believable quality that he brought to films like Knocked Up and This is Forty. The chemistry between Kumail and Emily is off the chart from the moment they meet - awkward, witty and charming, the pair of them stumble and banter their way into love. The script is beautifully judged and the two leads play it perfectly - Nanjiani likeably vulnerable and Zoe Kazan playing Emily with just the right degree of clued-in eccentricity. For romantic comedy to work you have to tumble into love with the couple, and here they make it happen effortlessly. (Which makes what follows all the more of a roller coaster.)

Hats off too to the support cast. The members of Kumail's family manage to be endearing and infuriating in equal measure, while his fellow stand-ups are given enough space to act as a dysfunctional comedy family in their own right. Special praise has to go, however, to Holly Hunter and Ray Romano as Emily's parents. If she's more renowned for her dramatic roles and he for his comic ones (Everybody Loves Raymond/the voice of Manny the Mammoth in endless Ice Age films), here they combine to nail both aspects, never less than when they tangle with a racist heckler at Kumail's comedy gig. The bond they forge with Kumail is one of the film's several moving story threads and the source of its biggest laughs. 

How much of The Big Sick is straight from Kumail and Emily's real life experience and how much is artistic embellishment I couldn't rightly say. The heart of the film, though, is all real - the romance beautiful, the drama painful and the comedy often hilarious. It's a sublime melding of the three and simply demands to be seen. In a summer of noise and spectacle, how refreshing to get back to something intimate, funny and touching. 

Gut Reaction: Regular chuckling with several laugh-out-louds and one disabling comedy gut-punch. Welled up at least three times, once to spillage. Not ashamed to say so.

Ed's Verdict: Romance/comedy/drama - triple knock-out. No schmaltz, nothing phony - just real, deep-seated emotion fused with the laughter. Book your ticket now.