Rom-Coma
The Big Sick tells a dramatised true story about Kumail Nanjiani and Emily Gordon (Emily Gardner in the film). Kumail is a Pakistani trying to live the American dream while his family is continually trying to set him up with an arranged marriage but falls in love with an American (Emily). After a fight over the fact that they could never be together due to cultural differences, they break up never to speak again until Emily’s friend calls Kumail to tell him that Emily is extremely sick in the hospital. She is forced into an induced medical coma during which time Kumail meets and bonds with her parents.
While I found the film enjoyable, I would have rather it be a drama than a romantic comedy. In an almost two hour movie, how is it possible to be able to see a couple meet, slowly date, fall in love, go through a coma and then see any sort of relationship afterwards. Although you see a clear connection between the two characters, there is definitely nothing to suggest that the two are soul mates or madly in love with each other. After the breakup, there is nothing to suggest that Kumail is even remotely sad about this and quickly moves on to the next girl. They couldn’t have possibly been broken up for very long for her friend to call him when she was in hospital. During the coma, there isn’t anything significant to make Kumail realise how much he is in love with her but yet he believes his whole life has changed during the experience.
When Emily wakes up, she is adamant that she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. She has good reasons for it to as for her, nothing has changed, she has just been asleep for a while. Then, she decides to go and see him again and looks heart broken when he says he’s moving cities. Does she only want him now that she can’t have him? Or did she just feel sorry for him in the video she saw of him bombing in his standup set? Whatever her reasoning is, it is unclear to the audience as to her change of mind. Perhaps the movie could have started midway through there relationship so that we could have seen more of the love and passion in it because it was lacking this too much for me to call it a rom com.
The banter and comedy side of it was really well written. Not just the standup comedy section of the film but the actual dialogue between characters was really funny and had the whole audience captured. I thought there could have been more of a balance between the comedy and the emotion in the film. Not less comedy but there should have been a bit more emotion shown from both the parents and Kumail who believes the love of his life is in critical condition. But as soon as we see him break down a little, she’s awake and the fear that she might die disappears. There was also not a significant score to film that impacted the emotion. In fact a lot of the scenes were oddly quiet and I’m a little unsure as to what the artistic choice was behind this.
As I said, it was not that the film was not enjoyable but rather could have been stylized to have more of an emotional impact on the audience but creating a more intense relationship between the two lead characters.