Deborah Ross

Tricky, and slightly sicky

Still, it is smarter than most rom-coms

The Big Sick is a rom-com that’s smarter than most rom-coms, which isn’t saying much, admittedly. It stars a Muslim man from a Pakistani background as the romantic lead, which has to be all to the good, and one character does pinpoint exactly what’s wrong with the internet: ‘You go online and they hate Forrest Gump… best fucking movie ever!’ (So true.) But at two hours it is overlong — Christopher Nolan had evacuated Dunkirk in that time, let’s remember — and it does leave a bad taste in the mouth. (Big sick, bad taste. Although, in fact, it’s not that kind of sick. This film may have the worst title of all time.)

Most rom-coms follow the same pattern: the cute meet, the fall out, then the reconciliation and maybe, along the way, someone will fall into a wedding cake or bring down a huge display of china in a department store? Always a risk, when dating. This, mercifully, avoids the physical comedy, but otherwise follows the pattern. However, as it’s founded on real-life events, perhaps we shouldn’t get too uppity. Produced by Judd Apatow (loads of stuff, although he hasn’t had a big-screen critical hit since 2011’s Bridesmaids), and directed by Michael Showalter, this is based on the actual courtship of Kumail Nanjiani, a stand-up comedian who plays himself here, and his wife, Emily V. Gordon, with whom he wrote the script. (She does not appear, but is instead played by Zoe Kazan.) At the outset, Nanjiani is an Uber driver and stand-up in Chicago who meets Emily when she heckles him one night. They sleep together. They start seeing each other. But he’s under pressure from his family to enter into an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman, and when Emily discovers, some months down the road, that he hasn’t yet told his parents about her, and likely never will, she breaks it off.

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