The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2017. It began a limited theatrical release on June 23, 2017, by Amazon Studios and Lionsgate, before going wide on July 14, 2017. One of the most acclaimed films of 2017, it was chosen by American Film Institute as one of the top 10 films of the year and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.[4] With a budget of $5 million, it grossed $56 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing independent films of 2017.
Plot
Kumail and Emily hook up after a comedy show in Chicago, after Kumail performs stand-up. Emily is a psychology graduate student from North Carolina at the University of Chicago, and claims to not have time for a relationship. Despite this, she and Kumail soon start dating.
Kumail is the son of Pakistani-American immigrants, who want him to quit comedy, pursue a career in law and marry a Pakistani woman. Kumail lies to them about preparing for law exams, and to appease them, occasionally meets Pakistani-origin women in an arranged marriage setup, as is typical in South Asian countries. One afternoon, while hanging out at his place, Emily discovers the headshots of the Pakistani women Kumail has met, leading to an argument between them. They clash over cultural differences and their views on marriage, and Emily breaks up with him.
At the comedy club, Kumail’s friends, Mary, CJ and Chris, encourage him to move on from Emily and focus on stand-up. Kumail improves his set, bringing him better audience reactions and an audition for the Montreal Comedy Festival. That night, he goes home with a female audience member from the club. While asleep with her, he is awoken by a call informing him that Emily is in the hospital. He goes to check on her, but Emily responds unenthusiastically to his visit. Meanwhile, doctors pull Kumail aside - assuming he is Emily’s husband - and pressure him to sign a medical release so they can place Emily in an artificial coma, to stabilize her condition. The next morning, Emily’s parents Terry and Beth, arrive to the hospital from NC.
Beth mirrors Emily’s coldness towards Kumail, but Terry is sympathetic. They both eventually warm up to him, as Kumail continues visiting Emily at the hospital. Feeling ignored, Kumail’s parents confront him at his bachelor pad after he misses a family engagement. Kumail confesses to having no interest in pursuing law nor in following South Asian customs. He also tells his parents about Emily for the first time, leaving them scandalised. Later that night, Emily’s health deteriorates, as doctors struggle to correctly diagnose her condition. Kumail bombs his Montreal audition, as he goes off on a tangent talking about his life’s struggles. The next morning, Emily miraculously responds to treatment and is awakened from coma.
Emily is diagnosed with adult-onset Still’s disease, but will make a full recovery. Terry and Beth are overjoyed, but Kumail feels excluded when Emily cites no interest in seeing him. She rejects his offer to get back together while at a ‘homecoming’ party at her place, to which he is invited by Beth. Dejected, Kumail heeds CJ and Mary’s advice to accompany them to New York, to restart his career in the vibrant comedy scene of the city. Kumail informs his family, who bid him farewell, signalling a potential reconciliation and acceptance of his decisions. In NYC, Kumail debuts a new set at a local comedy club. While generally well-received, he is heckled onstage by an audience member, who turns out to be Emily, mirroring the way they first met. As credits roll, real-life pictures come onscreen of Kumail and Emily’s eventual wedding.
Cast
Kumail Nanjiani as a fictionalized version of himself, an aspiring stand-up comic
Zoe Kazan as Emily Gardner, Kumail's girlfriend. She is a fictionalized version of Kumail's wife Emily V. Gordon
In February 2016, Zoe Kazan joined the cast,[7] along with Holly Hunter and Ray Romano in April 2016.[8] Unlike many of the other portrayals in The Big Sick, Romano's and Hunter's roles in the film were not modeled after Emily V. Gordon's actual parents. Instead, Hunter said that she never contacted or spoke with Gordon's mother before playing the part, as she wanted to "feel my own freedom with the character".[9] In May 2016, Aidy Bryant, Bo Burnham, Adeel Akhtar and Kurt Braunohler also joined the cast of the film.[10][11]David Alan Grier was cast in The Big Sick after he met with Gordon when she was a writer for The Carmichael Show. Grier's role was part of a larger subplot that was ultimately cut from the film's release.[12][13]
Anupam Kher's casting in the film was reported in June 2016. He was directly contacted by Kumail Nanjiani, as Nanjiani's father had recommended Kher play the role. According to Kher, his character's last scene in the film was the first scene he had filmed for the production. The Big Sick marks Kher's 500th appearance in a feature film.[14][15][16][17]
Writing
The screenplay for The Big Sick is written by Emily V. Gordon and her husband Kumail Nanjiani and is loosely based on the real-life courtship between them before their marriage in 2007. According to Nanjiani, the idea to make a script about them was first inspired by the film's eventual co-producer Judd Apatow when the two met while appearing in a 2012 episode of the You Made It Weirdpodcast.[18] Developed over the course of three years, the script has been called semi-autobiographical because, in addition to the two lead characters modeled after them, many of the events occurring during Gordon and Nanjiani's relationship are noted as being portrayed to an extent in the film.[19][20][21][22][23]
Though not part of the original script, a real-life incident involving Holly Hunter heckling an unnamed player during a US Opentennis match inspired a similar scene in the film where Nanjiani's character is heckled during one of his stand-up sets.[24]
There was backlash against the movie due to South Asian women being portrayed as stereotypical and undesirable.[34] Also, Vella Lovell, a half White and Black actress who is not of South Asian descent, played a Pakistani love interest with a strained accent.[35]
In 2021, Kumail Nanjiani said, "Our movie was the first one in a long time where there were multiple Desi female characters, and the first few you see are reduced...People wanted to see themselves. It's something I completely regret. I would not do it that way now."[36]
Reception
Box office
The Big Sick grossed $42.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $13.4 million in other territories, for a total gross of $56.2 million.[3]
In the film's limited opening weekend, it made $421,577 from five theaters (a per-theater gross of $84,315, the best of 2017 until Lady Bird in November), finishing 17th at the box office.[37] The film expanded to 2,597 theaters on July 14, 2017, and was projected to gross $9–11 million over the weekend.[31] It grossed $7.6 million over the weekend, finishing fifth at the box office.[38] On July 25, the film crossed $26 million, becoming the second highest-grossing independent film of 2017.[39][40]
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on 303 reviews, with an average rating of 8.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Funny, heartfelt, and intelligent, The Big Sick uses its appealing leads and cross-cultural themes to prove the standard romcom formula still has some fresh angles left to explore."[41] It was rated as Rotten Tomatoes' #1 summer movie of 2017.[42] On Metacritic, the film received an average score of 86 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[43] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[38]
In a review for the Toronto Star, Peter Howell gave The Big Sick four stars out of four, praising the film as "hilarious and heartbreaking", as well as applauding the performances of the entire cast.[44]Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film: "It is funny and smart and wise and silly, it is romantic and sweet and just cynical enough, and it is without a doubt one of the best romantic comedies I have seen in a long time."[45]The Big Sick was also selected as an "NYT Critic's Pick" by Manohla Dargis of The New York Times. In her review, Dargis praised Michael Showalter's direction and the screenplay by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani for "revitalizing an often moribund subgenre with a true story of love, death and the everyday comedy of being a 21st-century American."[46]
While praising the lead performances, Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph wrote a mixed review for The Big Sick. Collin contends that director Showalter "never comes close to dampening down its leading couple's inextinguishable appeal."[47] In a negative review for The New Yorker, Richard Brody wrote that the film "suffers from an excess of pleasantness, and this very pleasantness thins out its substance, blands out its tone, weakens its comedy."[48]
Accolades
According to a poll conducted by AwardsDaily in July 2017, polling one hundred critics, The Big Sick was voted the second best film of 2017 so far, behind Get Out.[49]
Satte Pe Satta. At minute 1:54:56 in The Big Sick, the father of the co-star (played by Kumail Nanjiani) reveals that he and the mother saw Satte Pe Satta on their first date.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
