"The Big Sick" Review
"The Big Sick" loosely follows the real life story of Kumail Nanjiani (played by Nanjiani himself) and Emily Gordon (played by Zoe Kazan) and what I really love about this movie is its unflinching and honest portrayal of the immigrant experience and non-romanticized look at love and relationships. It understands that most things in real life usually don't wrap up neatly, especially not in the way that a romantic comedy would have you believe. It starts out like a standard romantic comedy and takes a hard turn in a different direction that forces its characters to readjust to their surroundings as well as the audience. In lesser hands, this would've been a disaster. Nanjiani and Gordon basically ignores some of the big rules of screenwriting to great effect with some hyper-realistic cringe humour dialogue laced here and there to make the whole thing feel super uncomfortable.
Almost nothing feels out of place in The Big Sick, not even the extreme tonal shifts that feel weird at first but make sense in relation to the psychology of the characters. And these shifts are made all the more digestible by Nanjiani and Kazan as well as Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shrof as the parents. I only got to spend 2 hours with these characters but I came out of it feeling as if I've known these people for years. At times hilarious and other times heartbreaking, this is definitely a movie that can't be missed.