Right off the bat, I am going to come clean. I didn’t have a very good reaction to the trailer for The Big Sick. Not just the trailer, but all the words of praise were so focused on two genre defining words, “Romantic Comedy”. Directly preceding that, “Best”. So, all together, that could either be critical acclaim or dramatic hyperbole. The trailer combined with the headlines created this feeling in my gut that, somewhere, there was this romantic comedy vacuum that only multiracial diversity tethered to love, infections, and a coma could fill. All wrapped up in a nice “Based on a true story” tagline. I could sense that very little of the praise had anything to do with how it was and more to do with what it is. And what is it? Supposedly a modern love story, or maybe an old story in modern era. But what really put my kettle on was that nothing in the trailer made it feel like a “Romantic Comedy”. Needless to say, The Big Sick had an uphill campaign for this reviewer. And I hate to hike.

Look, I know that all sounds bleak. And not for nothing, I love romantic comedies. Many of my favorite films, guilty or otherwise, fall into this category hard, like Hugh Grant and the closest woman to him on screen. I have soft spots for When Harry Met Sally, The Holiday, 10 Things I Hate About You, There’s Something About Mary, 500 Days Of Summer. Like I said, I am as guilty as is my pleasure. By comparison, sitting through The Big Sick was like watching Amistad or Schindler’s List. That may sound harsh, but in my opinion, there was so much missing from the heart of this that would define it romance in the modern sense. In the aforementioned guilty films, the romance is nuanced, a struggle, tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, and through all this a surprise, despite it being one that you can see coming. In The Big Sick, there isn’t a moment when you think it won’t work out. That this film was going to be the true story of a romance that almost was. You don’t get to participate in the roller coaster of emotions the characters are on. And that is because all of the emotions are sucked into other places, like their parents, their cultural differences, or his visits to the hospital.

And that’s the real kicker here. This is either Romantic or Dramatic, but it certainly isn’t Comedic. It is sincerity masquerading as comedy. A situational comedy where the situation isn’t funny, just realistic. I found myself unable to find almost any part of this film funny. And this isn’t a negative criticism of the film as much as it is about the mis-categorization. Even when he is on stage,

Kumail Nanjiani

doesn’t find a moment to tell a great joke because he is in a constant state of depression, battling as he puts it “1400 years of culture” and a dying lover. This is classical romance, star crossed lovers, dueling families, and just because you stick a comedian in it doesn’t make it funny. In fact, comedians are naturally morose, so sitting their life story in front of a camera will naturally reflect that.

So there it is, my gripe, looming over my head throughout the entire film. A grudge set in motion by misleading trailers and taglines that I knew in my gut were at best meant to draw sales for a multiracial love story. A story that turned out to be raw, real, timely (despite its age), and educational. Most romantic comedies have something funny to say about love, but The Big Sick opted to skip all the back and forth, the lingering, the will-they-won’t-they to tell us the honest truth behind a Pakistani immigrant who would become a standup comic, quite possibly the most original American art form, and fall in love with a girl who went through a goth phase. This has taught me to always trust my gut, and my gut is telling you to check out this film. You might laugh.

~* 8/10 *~