Big on laughs but also tenderness
which was written by Kumail and Emily, achieves both, often, and in my case, at the same time.
The dialogue and situations unerringly pierce the grief and slow-burning dread of the hospital scenes, but never in a way that feels contrived or trite. These are people moving through a tragedy, it’s just that a lot of genuinely funny and perfectly observed stuff happens along the way.
Helping immeasurably is the Act 2 arrival of Emily’s parents, played, with unimprovable casting, by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano. The pair of them have brilliant chemistry and timing to die for, in the service of a couple of sub-plots that add complexity and an unexpected thorniness to a film that was already bouncing between genres.
A small cluster of real-life American comics make up Kumail’s friends and cohorts (it’s a running gag of sorts that the stand-up comedy routines in The Big Sick are far less funny than a lot of what is said off-stage). A considerable part of the film’s achievement is that every character on screen seems real and fleshed out.
There are no caricatures or stereotypes here. From Kumail’s family, his doofus of a flatmate, right down to an obnoxious fratboy heckler, everyone feels like they have a life off screen ingrained in their pores for us to see. Even the montaged parade of ‘‘suitable wives’’ that Kumail’s parents (Anupam Kher and Zenobia Shroff) arrange are treated with dignity and intelligence.
Director Michael Showalter keeps the film-making low key and unshowy, but the performances he has coaxed out of this cast are uniformly wonderful.
God, I adored this film. The Big Sick is warm, human, insightful and compassionate to its marrow. I came out of the screening with my faith restored on a number of levels. Yes, a small, beautifully written film can still find an audience at a multiplex. And that a small, beautifully written film can also be funny in a way that most mainstream comedies never even get close to. – Graeme Tuckett