The Big Sick

If, like me, the prospect of yet another Judd Apatow-produced, over-two-hour, autobiographical quasi-romcom about a stand-up comedian doesn’t exactly fill you with the desire to rush out and buy a ticket, you should make an exception for The Big Sick. The film, directed by Michael Showalter and written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani, doesn’t attempt to subvert the traditional romcom structure to make heavy-handed statements alongside as many crass jokes as possible (like far too many other films from Apatow) but rather creates an impressive blend of genres that takes the best aspects of each to produce something familiar yet original. 

Playing a version of himself, Nanjiani stars as a Pakistani-American stand-up named Kumail who gets romantically involved with a white girl with Southern roots named Emily (a version of Gordon, played by Zoe Kazan).  Although the interracial couple doesn’t seem to have many issues at first, they soon break up over Kumail’s unwillingness to commit—which is at least partially caused by parental pressure to marry a Muslim girl.  When, out of the blue, Emily becomes gravely ill and is placed in an induced coma, Kumail sticks around to help Emily’s parents deal with her illness, even though he and Emily are no longer a couple.

The premise, which adheres closely to the actual events in Gordon and Nanjiani’s relationship, presents an original predicament for its protagonists. It’s a love story where one of the lovers is not active (or even awake) for the majority of the narrative. In lesser hands, this structural anomaly could result in an offensively out-of-date movie where a young woman’s suffering exists only to enable the emotional growth of an immature man. It could also wind up as an uneven and tedious picture where audiences must sit through a prolonged middle section, waiting for the inevitable moment where the young woman wakes up. 

But Gordon and Nanjiani avoid these pitfalls by introducing two main characters late into the picture—Emily’s folks, wonderfully played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano. The awkward bond Kumail develops with both of them over the course of the film’s second act is more interesting than the abbreviated courtship he and Emily share in the first. Consummate screen stars Hunter and Romano could hold our interest even if their roles were underwritten, but the filmmakers imbue this mid-story relationship with layers of emotional depth as well as narrative and thematic ramifications, which make it the best part of the movie. Rather than having Emily disappear from the film when she enters her coma, she’s constantly present in our minds because we learn more about her through her parents. Not via stories they tell, illustrated by on-the-nose flashbacks, but by getting to know these characters, witnessing the way they interact with each other, and the way they treat their unconscious child. Even more significantly, the connection Kumail cultivates with his ex-girlfriend’s folks reverberates with The Big Sick’s other main plotline, his inability to forge an honest, adult relationship with his own parents.

The film works as a romance, an illness drama, a maturation story, a fish-out-of-water comedy, a first generation immigrant narrative, and even a comedy of errors. This successful amalgamation sustains the just over two hour running time and distinguishes The Big Sick from the recent crop of movies about comedians—Funny People (2009), Sleepwalk with Me (2012), Obvious Child (2014), Don't Think Twice (2016)—which aim for a balance of hilarity and insight, but end up as pretentious, navel-gazing bores.  Director Showalter, a writer and cast member of the sketch troop The State and their movies like Wet Hot American Summer (2001), has had a spotty career as a director of features like The Baxter (2005) and Hello, My Name Is Doris (2015). But he strikes the ideal tone in The Big Sick; never sacrificing the picture’s credibility for a laugh, but keeping the proceedings funny, truthful, and touching.