Zoe Kazan can transform even the most stock role into something indelible. In the broadest sense, her character Emily in the romantic dramedy “The Big Sick” is about as basic as they come. She’s “the girlfriend” — the woman whose humor, kindness, and vivacity gives the hero the catalyst he needs for change. But Kazan’s so hilarious and three-dimensional, able to turn on a dime from goofy to guarded to outright angry. She makes such an impression in the first 40 minutes of “The Big Sick” that when the plot kicks in — and Emily suffers a mysterious illness that forces her into a medically induced coma — her presence still lingers, giving the rest of the movie a deeper meaning. The characters and the audience wait nervously to see if she’ll ever get to crack jokes or burst into tears or notice a particularly pretty bird ever again.
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Kazan’s performance in “The Big Sick” is very much in the spirit of the film, which transforms several worn indie genres into something personal and lively. This is one part disease movie, one part “private lives of stand-up comedians,” one part cultural assimilation saga, and one part “boy loses girl and learns to grow up” tale. But because it’s all based on a true story — taken from the real-life courtship and medical melodramas of comic Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon — it feels spot-on in nearly every aspect.
Nanjiani stars as a not-too-lightly fictionalized version of his younger self: a rising Chicago stand-up and part-time Uber driver who falls hard for Kazan’s Emily, even though he knows that dating a white girl means he risks getting disowned by his traditionalist Pakistani family. Shortly before Emily falls ill, she and Kumail break up, unable to overcome his unwillingness to be honest with his parents about her. So when he shows up at the hospital to help take care of her, he’s not exactly welcomed openly by Emily’s parents (played by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), who know all about how he broke her heart.
Produced by Judd Apatow, director Michael Showalter doesn’t do anything spectacular visually with “The Big Sick.” For the most part, his lack of style serves the comedy, letting the performances and Nanjiani and Gordon’s sharp script do the work. (There are quotable bits aplenty, but the biggest laugh-line may be when Kumai tells Emily’s parents that he was “anti” 9/11, because “we lost 19 of our best guys.”) Where Showalter stumbles is with the dramatic arc. There’s a doggedness to the second half of “The Big Sick,” as the movie crosses its many Ts and dots its many Is —even after the destination where everything is headed seems pretty clear. Just a little bit of elision would’ve been welcome.
That said, the time this movie takes to let situations evolve means that the conflicts aren’t wrapped up with a single speech or conversation. Showalter, Nanjiani, and Gordon take their characters’ problems seriously. Centuries of Pakistani family tradition don’t disappear just because Kumail feels very strongly about how he wants to live his life and who he wants to love. Any pain he caused Emily before she fell into unconsciousness won’t fade right away just because he ultimately forges a close bond with her folks — in moments she never gets to experience firsthand.
There’s a certain flat indie artlessness to “The Big Sick,” but it’d be shortsighted to discount how well-written and well-acted it is. This is a very funny movie, yet always plausibly so — never throwing in jokes just for the sake of a laugh. It’s grounded in the world of today, where people rely on technology for everything from diagnosing a disease to calling a cab. (It’s probably fair to say that this film contains the sharpest Uber gag yet put on the big or small screen.) And throughout, it maintains the specificity of Kumail’s Pakistani roots — which has him getting set up by his mom with woman after woman that he’s never going to marry — and even takes the time to develop Emily’s parents as complex individuals. Right down the tearjerking final moments, this is a movie where every detail isn’t just thought-out, but lived-through. [B+]
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