By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Michael Showalter
Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff, Adeel Akhtar, Aidy Bryan, Kurt Braunohler, Jeremy Shamos, Bo Burnham and David Alan Grier.
Rating: Excellent.
Michael Showalter, director of last year´s indie comedy “Hello, My Name is Doris” joins forces with Producer Judd Apatow and bring “The Big Sick”, a romantic comedy that has very good results.
Based in true events, the movie centers in Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) a Pakistani stand up comedian and driver in Chicago that meets in a show a girl named Emily (Zoe Kazan).
Both of them feel an interesting attraction from the beginning and will form a true relationship.
The problem is that Kumail has an impediment in his culture, which is arranged marriage. When Emily finds about this she is devastated and have to break their relationship.
One day Kumail receives a call from a friend of Emily´s and informs him that she is in the hospital and has been diagnosed with a strange disease.
Now Kumail will be at Emily´s side no matter what and will try to do anything to get Emily in his life again, even if it means to be disowned by his family.
One of the things that made “The Big Sick” work is the fact that this movie is practically Kumail Nanjiani´s and Emily Gordon´s life and how they met. Both of them wrote a beautiful and crafted screenplay.
Michael Showalter´s direction was really good and knew how to get the best of his cast that included an Academy Award Winner (Holly Hunter).
Other element that made the movie work is that the way how they mention the culture and the traditions of Kumail´s family. Normally this kind of movies do not touch the subject and go straight to the facts.
The way how the internal conflicts of both characters were triggered in the movie was very interesting and not only the movie is a comedy, but is also considered a drama.
I still feel that has a lot of Judd Apatow elements, like the fact that the movie is long. I did not mind this but again in a movie of this genre the timing is important.
I do have an enourmous respect towards Judd Apatow, who I consider one of the best romantic comedy filmmakers in the business but I think that he could be even better if he would watch carefully the length of his movies that he directs and produces.
Even though “The Big Sick” is a movie that the length is two hours long, you enjoy it and they go pretty fast.
There were moments in this movie that I was touched and the way how the love story between Kumail and Emily was portrayed was very original and didn´t had any cliché moments or over the top and this is another factor of the movie that made it work.
“The Big Sick” is a very enjoyable comedy, I put in the year´s best films and I give a huge recommendation to this sweet and tender movie.