Movie Review: “The Big Sick” Is the Sweet-Sad Rom-Com of Our Dreams

Have you heard the one about the Pakistani-American comedian with an overbearing family and his deathly-ill, white girlfriend?

It’s a set-up so specific it must be true, otherwise you’d accuse The Big Sick’s writers of overstuffing their plot-turkey. In fact, writers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon literally lived the events of their film (taking a few creative liberties), and Nanjiani gets to be himself in the retelling of their odd courtship.

As if couples weren’t already competitive about their ‘meet cute’ story; the Nanjiani-Gordon household convinced super-producer Judd Apatow and director Michael Showalter to bring theirs to the big screen.

Thankfully, it makes for a very special movie, and one I was happy to live inside of for 124 minutes. (Is there room in the household for one more?)

Zoe Kazan stars opposite Nanjiani as Emily Gardiner (note the name-change, to remind you this isn’t a documentary). She’s an aspiring therapist with one failed marriage in her rearview, and an unwillingness to start seeing anyone new. Kumail is a struggling comic, sometimes-chauffeur and lapsed Muslim. It’ll never work! And yet, sparks fly when she politely heckles him during his stand-up in Chicago, and they quickly enter a not-so-casual relationship. He even gets a second job out of the romance, gleefully becoming her personal Uber driver.

Things soon become serious between them, particularly when Emily agrees to drop a deuce in Kumail’s apartment. But Nanjiani’s immigrant parents (Zenobia Shroff, Anupam Kher) and their cultural expectations derail the relationship. They keep urging him towards an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman—any Pakistani woman—and when Emily finds out, she breaks it off with Kumail.

Any veteran of the genre might guess where this is heading. (An early mention of Hugh Grant’s ‘90s haircut invokes the ghosts of clichéd rom-coms past). But real-life cares not for third-act resolutions. Emily is struck by a mystery infection and put into an induced coma (just as the real Emily was), so in fly her folks (Holly Hunter, Ray Romano) from North Carolina, giving Kumail more parents to disappoint.

The Big Sick

Zoe Kazan (a fine writer herself) stamps The Big Sick with her plucky, prickly personality before becoming unconscious. She also wrote and starred in the criminally underrated anti-rom-com Ruby Sparks. It’s like she was born to murder manic pixie dream girls.

From what I’ve gleaned from Gordon’s podcast appearances over the years, Kazan seems to nail the real Emily’s temperament. Kumail has the easier job on paper, despite having to revisit a private tale of genuine trauma while still being winning and hilarious. (He’s both.) The Big Sick will be a reward to his long-time fans who had to slog through failed comedies like Hell Baby and Bad Milo for the smallest fix of his droll wit and smooth-shaky voice.

A quick glimpse at the credits will spoil Emily’s fate (unless you assumed Gordon contributed to the script via séance). But this isn’t about whether the girl will survive, and it’s certainly not about the guy convincing the girl’s parents he’s worthy (though Kumail’s awkward wooing of Emily’s mum and dad is an interesting flip of the arranged dates set up by his own). The Big Sick—beyond being a lovely, warmly funny time—reminds you of the weight that comes with a relationship. And the bigness of Emily’s sickness is only part of that baggage. In his brilliantly tedious one-man show, Kumail’s character explains in granular detail the scope of Pakistan’s history; later, as he hides his relationship from his parents, confronted with the prospect of disownment, that history returns.

Showalter and his screenwriters don’t drown the audience in life lessons or political messages. However, their flick covers plenty of ground, including what it means to be a Muslim in the West today. Kumail gets called a terrorist on stage, endures suspicious side-eyes at a baseball field and is asked for his stance on 9/11; yet when told by his parents to take his prayer mat to their basement, he goes down and watches YouTube videos on his phone instead. And his parents’ very charming, preferred partner, Khadija (Vella Lovell), feels the weight of her family herself, wishing she could just be in a marriage already—not because she’s lonely, but rather, because she’s done with the auditioning.

Showalter’s previous picture, the beautiful Hello, My Name Is Doris, sweetly navigated a May-December flirtation. With that and The Big Sick, one of the brains behind the ingenious Wet Hot American Summer has astoundingly become the go-to director for tender, lived-in, culturally-taboo romances. He’s not quite as adventurous or iconoclastic as Hal Ashby, but he’s filling a niche that’s otherwise empty. Right now, I wouldn’t trust anyone other than Michael Showalter to make the rom-com of my life.

I’d want Nanjiani and Gordon to write it as well. The courageousness they bring to their unvarnished story is inspiring. It’s no surprise Hunter, Romano and Indian legend Kher were willing to join them for the ride; each, along with Shroff, add idiosyncratic detail to their diversely drawn characters. They’re individually gifted with big laugh lines.

If The Big Sick loses shape in its wandering, closure-seeking final stretch, I’m happy to blame that on the general shapelessness of life itself. On Nanjiani and Gordon’s second feature, we can talk about structure. Some movies are too special to grill for minor blemishes. The Big Sick is one of those.

4.5/5

In cinemas August 3. Rated M for coarse language and sexual references.