MOVIES
BY RICK LEVIN
KUMAIL NANJIANI IN
THE BIG SICK
THE LONG NAP
A stand-up comedian deals with
a girlfriend in a coma in The Big Sick
T
he Big Sick is an odd duck. As a romantic comedy,
it is neither very romantic nor particularly funny,
despite the fact that one of its two main charac-
ters, Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani), is a struggling
stand-up comic trying to break out of the Chicago
club circuit. Aside from a handful of gut-busters, the film’s
humor is awkward and a bit ill at ease, as though wanting
desperately to pause at every moment to ask, “Was that
funny?”
Odd also, in that Kumail’s romantic interest, Emily
(Zoe Kazan), spends about half the movie in a medically
induced coma as a team of specialists scrambles to zap the
mystery infection spreading through her body.
Kumail, the son of Pakistani-American parents (Anu-
pam Kher and Zenobia Shroff) who are trying to fob him
off in a traditional arranged marriage, spends the latter part
of the movie realizing he is indeed in love with this uncon-
scious girl, and that it’s up to him to defy his parents and
do everything he can to win her back.
The Big Sick is produced by Judd Apatow, and it bears
the Apatow stamp at every turn: Humor that can be a tad
risqué but always somehow preternaturally pleasant; a
kind of pre-millennial realpolitik that combines irony and
smarts with a straining to burst the bonds of its own chron-
ic adolescence; and a combined fear and desire for the tra-
ditional comforts of middle-class bourgeois life, preferably
of the educated, white, Williamsburg variety.
And yet, the film deviates from the standard Apatow
formula, perhaps because the script, co-written by Nanjiani
and his girlfriend, Emily V. Gordon, is based on their real-
life trials as an interracial couple as well as the mystery
illness Gordon suffered early in their relationship.
The first half of The Big Sick is clunky and meandering,
in ways good and bad. The pacing is lackadaisical though
not lacking in a certain ambulatory charm, especially in the
scenes between Kumail and his family, who exerts undue
pressure on the young man to maintain traditional Mus-
lim ways. The budding if somewhat half-hearted romance
between Kumail and Emily is more sweet and silly than
sexy and passionate; both of them are almost unbearably
cute as they fumble toward connection. Two excessively
pleasant and eagerly agreeable people rarely generate heat
on screen.
The film doesn’t really take off until Emily’s parents,
played by Holly Hunter and Ray Romano, show up at
the hospital to oversee her care. As the fiercely protective
mother, Hunter righteously shuns Kumail for breaking her
daughter’s heart; Romano, a bit more forgiving (or, as his
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NY Times Critics’ Pick
Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a
widower battles for custody of his son. A tender drama
performed entirely in Yiddish (with English subtitles), the
fi lm intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of
parenthood. 97% RT.
AUGUST 25-31
2:00, 4:00, 6:00, 8:00
THE BIG SICK (R) FINAL WEEK!
Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student
Emily Gardner fall in love but struggle as their cultures clash.
When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail fi nds him-
self forced to face her feisty parents, his family’s expectations,
and his true feelings. 98% RT.
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wife would have it, cowardly), strikes up a reluctant friend-
ship with Kumail, and the scenes between these two are
among the film’s funniest, and most moving.
Romano has the shaggy, stumbly, mildly snide man-act
down pat, but here he adds a vulnerable warmth to it that
reveals unexpected depths to his acting skills; he is com-
pletely believable as a husband and father reeling from one
big mistake (just guess what that is …) that haunts him to
the point of paralysis. And Hunter has always been one of
my favorite actors; here she’s at once hilarious, endearing
and rather scary, as a woman whose gargantuan sense of
self is at once her greatest strength and greatest obstacle.
She and Romano practically steal the film from the leads.
Despite the dire circumstances that compel the plot —
girlfriend in a coma, impending career suicide, permanent
exile from one’s family — nothing much seems at stake
in The Big Sick. The movie generates a kind of mild-man-
nered tension that has less to do with matters of life and
death and more with how an unlikely group of people deals
with those matters.
In this sense, The Big Sick works fairly well, as a pretty
funny, sorta romantic film about generally good people try-
ing to deal with a really shitty situation. It doesn’t quite
fulfill the promise of its conceit, and to its credit, it doesn’t
seem that interested in doing so. It seems content to be an
intelligent, warmly fuzzy romantic comedy that shuns the
requirements of its given genre. (Bijou Art Cinemas)
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ALL SAINTS (DIGITAL) (PG)
11:00AM 1:45PM 4:30PM 7:15PM
10:00PM
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11:05AM 1:55PM 4:50PM 7:45PM
10:30PM
ATOMIC BLONDE (DIGITAL) (R)
10:15AM 4:10PM 10:25PM
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9:50PM
BIRTH OF THE DRAGON (DIGITAL)
(PG-13)
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9:40PM
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(PG-13)
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EMOJI MOVIE, THE (DIGITAL) (PG)
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(PG-13)
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HITMAN’S BODYGUARD, THE
(DIGITAL) (R)
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(DIGITAL) (PG-13)
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