Brief Synopsis: Girl heckles comedian. Comedian meets girl. The comedian and his heckler fall in love…and break up five months later. The girl falls into a coma and the comedian meets her parents for the first time at the hospital — just the average, everyday romance. But the twist is that it’s a true story written by the couple themselves: Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon. Kumail plays himself in his early days as a struggling Pakistani-American comedian living in Chicago, who falls in love with Emily (Zoe Kazan), an energetic graduate student studying to become a therapist. Their relationship falls apart, though, when Emily discovers that Kumail has been keeping her a secret from his family because he’s afraid of being disowned as they expect him to have an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman. In the understated words of Kumail in their heated argument, “It’s complicated.” But when Emily is put into a coma due to a lung infection, Kumail has to figure out his feelings for Emily…and how he’s going to make things right with two sets of parents: his own and Emily’s. 

I love The Big Sick because it’s not like most romantic comedies I’ve seen. (To be fair, just based on the collection of films I saw in 2018, I watch way too many animated and science fiction/fantasy films, so romance is definitely not my area of expertise.) The main focus of the film isn’t so much Kumail and Emily’s relationship or even the fact she goes into the coma — we go into the film knowing that Kumail and Emily wrote the screenplay, so it’s not really a spoiler to say she survives — it’s actually the dynamic between Kumail and his parents, Azmat (Anupham Kher) and Sharmeen (Zenobia Shroff), as well as Kumail and Emily’s parents, Beth (Holly Hunter) and Terry (Ray Ramano). Most romances seem to be singularly focused on the romantic couple, and ignore any other important figures in their lives. The Big Sick reverses that — it’s the other important people in Kumail’s life (his family) that are the reason he and Emily initially break up, because he doesn’t want to follow the same cultural traditions as his parents but he also doesn’t want to disappoint them. After Emily goes into the coma, the plot cleverly unfolds to show us how Kumail sorts out his feelings for Emily not through spending time with her, but by getting to know her parents. 

It’s hard to say how good of an actor Kumail Nanjiani really is in this film, simply because he’s playing a slightly more dramatic version of himself, but I would say it’s a breakout role for him as a struggling Pakistani-American comedian with a talent for self-deprecating wit and hiding his agnosticism from his traditional Muslim parents. On the outside looking in, it’s weird to know that this movie is based on a real story, because we’re really only given Kumail’s perspective on the events that took shape. But I love how you can feel the love and respect Kumail has for his parents. Sharmeen, Kumail’s mother, spends much of the movie planning blind dates at dinner parties in the hope of creating an arranged match for her youngest son, except Kumail has absolutely zero interest in it and goes along to appease his mother. In a different type of movie, I felt like this conflict of interest could have set off an explosive family battle or the tone could have been much more brooding and intense, but The Big Sick through and through is a comedy that treats life with a naturalistic worldview. It finds humor in people’s eccentricities and poorly timed jokes (and believe me, every character in this film has their fair share of awkwardness and offbeat one-liners), which lends the movie a sense of sincerity I honestly didn’t expect going in.

And on the other end, Kumail’s experiences with Emily’s parents are likewise humorous and awkward, with solid undertones of painful tension between Beth and Terry (for reasons I won’t spoil for you). The casting in this film is great, because Holly Hunter and Ray Ramano deliver performances that are outside of what you might expect. Hunter is a firecracker and a dynamic force as Emily’s mother — and it offers Kumail a glimpse into where Emily gets her own wound-up ball of energy. As for Ramano, he plays Terry with more intensity, more emotion than what I think he’s known for, so it was refreshing to see him deliver in both comedic and dramatic moments. 

The Big Sick is extremely emotionally satisfying. We not only have the benefit of knowing Kumail and Emily come through the other side, but Kumail’s developing relationships with the two sets of parents in the film offer a unique perspective on cultural differences and the necessity of considering romantic love in terms of two families coming together. It’s also a sharply written, down-to-earth comedy that feels connected to real life in a way that other romantic comedies don’t. It’s also inspired me to order a burger with four slices of cheese the next time I go to McDonald’s — just to see what happens.