The Big Sick **** (2017, Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano) – Movie Review

The Big Sick is very sweet and very funny, and very well sustained for its epic two hours. Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan are good but Holly Hunter is outstanding. Even the hospital stuff is funny, and that’s a real stretch.

Director Michael Showalter’s romantic comedy drama is very sweet and very funny, and very well sustained for its epic two hours.

Boy (Kumail Nanjiani) meets girl (Zoe Kazan), loses girl, she gets The Big Sick, boy wins girl again. Around that simple but tricky-to-pull-off idea are a few others – Kumail (Nanjiani), is bidding to become a stand-up comedian, Emily is put in a medically-induced coma, Kumail’s family tries to fix him up with a wife, and Kumail has to deal with Emily’s troubled parents Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter, Ray Romano).

So there’s a lot to pull in, even in a full two hours. The budding stand-up comedian thing is great for laughs, and for a bit of heart-string pulling too, as long as the writers and performers know what they are doing – and it turns out they do! Nanjiani is star and co-writer (with Emily V Gordon) and he knows what he’s doing and does it well, very well. As performer, he’s not too smug and smirky this time, and the tragic illness theme, when it kicks in, gives him a spine as actor.

Of course we don’t expect romcoms to take it tragic illness, and it is very tricky indeed, but the film navigates it very successfully, movingly even. It turns out the film is about something for a change, a few things actually.

Nanjiani and Kazan are good (though unfortunately of course her role naturally disappears around half way), and Romano is good too in his support role, but Holly Hunter is outstanding as the frosty-seeing mom. It is nice to have her back.

Just two quibbles. (1) The Big Sick is an off-putting title. Why didn’t they call it Comatose? They have the title in their production company at the end credit. (2) The real-life wedding pictures are a little mistake at the end, maybe.

However, against those, it a charming, funny movie. Even the hospital stuff is funny, and that’s a real stretch.

It is billed as An Awkward True Story, so it must actually have happened something like this, but real life can’t have been as funny, probably not funny at all. Emily V Gordon lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Kumail Nanjiani.

It is an Apatow Productions film, produced by Judd Apatow, and, unique though it is, is somehow typical of his work. You think it might have been a huge hit, ought have been a huge hit, but it grossed a relatively modest $24.5 million in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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