A LAB OUR OF LOVE...
It’s over-hyped and over here — and though sweet, this culture clash American romcom falls short of being a classic
Set IN Chicago, the Big Sick is a romantic comedy with weepie pretensions about a mixed-race relationship. It chronicles the burgeoning love between a young, white American woman and a Pakistani immigrant — then explores what happens when she falls dangerously ill and her parents come to watch over her.
the film arrives in our cinemas trailing hosannas from U.S. critics, many of whom adored its tender charm, ‘gut-bustingly’ funny comedy and, no doubt, anti-trump message.
there are certainly some sharp gags at the expense of those who assume all Muslims to be terrorists, or at least sympathetic towards the perpetrators of 9/11. the film has also been celebrated for its daring; the romantic lead is a man who, while thoroughly Americanised, was born in Pakistan to strict Shia Muslims.
this is Kumail Nanjiani, who wrote the screenplay with his wife emily V. Gordon. the Big Sick was apparently inspired by the story of their own courtship.
Now, I confess to being a little less enthusiastic than my U.S. counterparts, largely because Michael Showalter’s romcom (produced by comedy grandee Judd Apatow) didn’t quite deliver on mighty expectations.
the Big Sick seems certain to do well at the UK box office, and I hope it does. But I also envisage a La La Land situation, where no matter how good a film is, it can’t possibly live up to the thunderous hyperbole of its marketing.
I was also uneasy about a film that is meant to be so darned liberal actually compounding certain racial preconceptions.
Nonetheless, there is a great deal to like, starting with a quartet of extremely engaging performances. Nanjiani is excellent as Kumail, a part-time Uber driver with ambitions to become a full-time stand-up comedian.
Zoe Kazan is similarly fine as emily, whom he meets one evening after she has affectionately heckled his comedy act.
emily is all-American, but it can hardly have escaped the filmmakers that they cast the granddaughter of great Hollywood director elia Kazan, born in turkey to Greek parents.
After all, this is a tale of cultural assimilation. there is even a hint of it in the backstory of emily’s parents Beth and terry: Beth was a small-town Southern belle who got married out of her comfort zone to a klutsy New Yorker ( exquisitely played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano).
But the challenges of assimilating are mainly embodied by Kumail and his parents (Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff). they brought him and his brother Naveed (British actor Adeel Akhtar) to the Land of Opportunity, yet expect both sons to live within the tight confines NAVeedof Muslim orthodoxy.
has cheerfully conformed, but Kumail doesn’t want to pray five times a day, and certainly doesn’t want an arranged marriage.
Much comedy is extracted from Kumail’s mother contriving an ‘accidental’ visit from an eligible girl every time he goes round for dinner.
But this is also where I grew uneasy: we are encouraged to believe that for modern, forwardthinking Pakistani-American men, perfectly respectable Pakistani- American women
might make less desirable partners than sassy white girls.
Whatever, the narrative then takes a tonal lurch into much darker territory, with Emily’s sudden grave illness.
This might well be based on real life, but to me seemed artificial — a device to nudge the story along.
More happily, it also means the arrival of fierce, loving Beth and dopey, likeable Terry, whose conflicted feelings about Kumail and own relationship complications (following Terry’s infidelity) give the film a welcome twist.
I’ve been a little in love with Holly Hunter for 30 years, ever since Broadcast News, so it’s a rare treat to see her in a really strong role. But Romano is just as good.
Slick dialogue and fine acting make The Big Sick far more worth seeing than not.
I’m not blowing raspberries, but it didn’t burst my gut, split my sides, or make me cry, so I’m not blowing rhapsodies, either.
GIRLS Trip has also been praised to the skies, and I’m sorry to report that I was, again, a little underwhelmed. Like The Big Sick it’s a comedy with poignant undertones, as four middle- aged African-American women set off for New Orleans in the hope of rediscovering the wild sisterhood they enjoyed in college, where they were known (albeit mainly to themselves) as the ‘Flossy Posse’.
The most conspicuously successful is Ryan (Regina Hall), an author married to a hunky American football star, whose book, You Can Have It All, has made her a self-help sensation.
The others are a gossip columnist called Sasha (Queen Latifah), the promiscuous, hard- drinking Dina ( Tiffany Haddish) and respectable, mumsy Lisa (Jada Pinkett Smith), who is the only mother of the group.
Needless to say, when Ryan finds that actually she doesn’t have it all, her old mates rally round, yielding corny greetings-card lines such as: ‘No one has the power to shatter your dreams unless you give it to them.’
The film’s gang of four have an easy chemistry and there is some nicely crafted comedy — and plenty that might have been plotted on the back of a dirty postcard. Director Malcolm D. Lee clearly has films such as The Hangover in mind, but strains for ribaldry a little too relentlessly in trying to make his black women more than a match for the dozens of white men who have behaved disgracefully in movies just like this, not to mention the lily-white cast of Bridesmaids.
There are some decidedly vulgar scenes — and from where I was sitting, not all of them work. MAYBE
I just wasn’t sitting in the right place. I’d love to see this film as part of an audience of mostly African- American women of a certain age, of the kind I came to know when I lived in Atlanta, Georgia, some years ago. It would raise the roof.
Yet in so flaunting its target demographic, Girls Trip runs the risk of disenfranchising others.
Still, the film at least gives a fresh dimension to a cinematic cliche, that of the middle-aged friends examining and testing the bonds that brought them together in the first place.
What makes Girls Trip a comedy, like so many movies before it, is that they get outrageously drunk at the same time.