The Big Sick

And Restitution To The Wrong People

First off, I wrote an entry over at Ted Hope’s Substack yesterday. If you haven’t seen it, you can read it here!

Secondly, welcome, all you new subscribers! Keep spreading the signal, I’m glad to have you here. I hope you believe in criminal justice reform like I do, and that we can keep spreading the message. And whether you do or don’t, we can still keep discussing movies, paywall-free. Anyway, onto the conclusion of COMEDY WEEK!

I hate to legitimize the concerns, and, let’s face it, the petty fears of the small-minded. But for all those too-online simpletons complaining about DEI and wanting to be actively “un-woke” by refusing to center anyone that isn’t a straight white male, I’d like to recommend “The Big Sick”. Because this, in every way, is a story about someone to whom you cannot relate. Because this is a true story, a true story it’s likely none of us have experienced, felt by, written by, and performed by someone who huge swaths of America wouldn’t find ethnically-recognizable. For those who look at this movie and say, “Not for me,” I would say, yes, reach out and watch this one. It’s a big planet. Stop letting “not for me” be a barrier.

We begin with Kumail Nanjiani, playing himself – literally this time, not like the cinematic comic persona he’s been fostering for a good long while now. He’s a struggling standup comedian in Chicago who cracks wise with his backstage buddies night after night as they all wait to be discovered by a comedy svengali who might whisk them all to comedy heaven (Toronto, natch). This is work, where he toils in relative anonymity, though it’s less harsh then when he visits his parents at home. Oblivious to his talents and dismissive to his aspirations, they proceed to set him up on a series of dates with Pakistani women straight off an arranged-marriage conveyor belt. As the movie sadly notes, this devotion to tradition is making Kumail, and these women, suffer.

Enter Emily, played by the kewpie-cute Zoe Kazan. Like any man with a pulse, and probably many women too, Kumail falls for this impulsive, directionless young woman always with a joke from her lips and a head full of stress. She falls hard for Kumail, who nonetheless continues his double life of politely meeting, and politely turning down, would-be arranged wives, lest his family excommunicate him. When Emily finds out, she sees this as a betrayal, and I choose to believe this is because he forced her to sit through his awful one-man show. Kudos to Aidy Bryant and Bo Burnham as his fellow comedians, who are depicted as having seen said show multiple times. They are very good friends.

Just as the relationship detonates, Emily is hospitalized for unknown reasons. Upon visiting her, he is told by doctors that he is the only one who can authorize the proper treatment – she has to be placed in a coma to ensure further treatment. With a heavy heart and considerable fear, he agrees. Which is how this becomes the least-ideal situation to meet her parents. Oh look, there’s the guy that put my daughter in a coma, how nice to meet you. To the credit of Kumail the co-writer, Kumail the character never really stops quivering in his shoes.

“The Big Sick” seemed like it would be a romantic movie – it is – but what’s fascinating is how the bulk of the film is about a man growing to know, and understand, his girlfriend’s parents under a stressful situation. The kindness shown by Emily’s mother and father, coming from North Carolina up to Chicago, is not romanticized, and the drama is played straight – a surprise considering anyone who knows the work of the director, former member of “The State” Michael Showalter. What is it with these sketch comedians who become really sharp directors? It helps that he’s got a couple of ringers in Ray Romano and Holly Hunter in these parts. It’s not a surprise that Hunter absolutely devours her role as a complex spitfire of a woman. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Romano is so good after spending nine seasons on “Everybody Loves Raymond”, which is, in essence, basically Broadway. Hunter attacks every moment with ferocity, despite her character’s less-than-laser precision. Romano’s patriarch, meanwhile, is eternally overwhelmed. During one scene, he makes a dark confession to Kumail, and he plays the moment like a man who thought he could reach some sort of philosophical depth simply by talking through his pain, only to be reminded of exactly how he’s built.

“The Big Sick” is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, exhibiting the kind of hurtful honesty that should have been in “Meet The Parents” and every “Meet The Parents” variant. But the movie is not sentimental, and in fact deals with the familiar reality that the world is not waiting on your own personal growth. There’s one moment late in the film – there are a lot of moments like this, but I’m referring to one in particular – where one character says the absolute meanest thing to another, loudly and articulately, and I had to pause and take a walk. Not because of its savagery – but that, yes – but because you wonder if perhaps it’s warranted. It serves as a reminder of what the characters here grow to understand, that love is a choice, a choice we can make in varying ways, but a choice we have to make – it’s not going to land in our laps, on schedule, nor will it be neat or even familiar.

I’m not entirely sure if you heard the news, but we’re going to start compensating those that were prosecuted and indicted unfairly. There’s been a long history of the American government wrongly prosecuting and harassing innocent people, citizens that have been shot at, people who have been harassed, people who have been victims of elaborate conspiracies. Some of these men and women were detained illegally, some were even killed. It’s a long history of judicial abuse, and it’s going to be rectified now. And the first person to be reimbursed will be Donald Trump.

Like most of this fool’s actions, this would be a blatant mockery of the many men and women who unjustly served time behind bars, the people who had their lives ruined by investigations and harassment. If you needed more proof that this nation’s laws were written to benefit the powerful, then know that as President, Trump is well within his rights to request the Department of Justice reward him for $230 million in damages for prosecuting him for the crimes he both claims he did not commit and frequently, on the record, admits to committing, because he is the worst criminal ever – imagine if this guy was your co-conspirator. Your sentence would grow by centuries. That $230 million would come out of the public’s pocket, taxpayer money geared towards Trump’s feelings, and not any longstanding legal issues – he has claimed it “might” go to charity, which totally sounds like something he would do, right? I could be articulate about this, but I’m frankly pissed. If this country is going to correct problems within the criminal justice system, it’s not going to start by giving this wealthy idiot more money for his personal piggybank.

On Monday, we’re doing a week of MEGASTARS!