Kumail Nanjiani – Tripping Through Gateways

Kumail Nanjiani is the titular Stu. Stu is a…uh… studious guy. He works to thankless job, and is helping a woman he is in love with start her own business. Meanwhile, Dave Bautista is the reckless and angry cop Vic. Vic is dedicated to catching the cop killing drug dealer Oka Tedjo. But on the day he gets eye surgery, he finds out that he only has hours to find Oka.

This leads to Vic Reluctantly ordered an Uber ride and forcing the driver, Stu, to take him around town tracking the villain down holding the promise of a badly needed Five Star Rating over his head.

The main things to like in the film is that Nanjiani and Bautista. They work well together, Bautista working his “tough guy muscles” and Nanjiani flexing his “nice but downtrodden guy muscles”. That part works really well.

Unfortunately, they are surrounded by a largely predictable and cliched story. They try and lampshade this, making light of the cliches, but the film never feels like it is truly having fun with the action premise as much as it appears they wanted to. I saw every major plot twist coming. And that is too bad…this film has a good cast (the leads are supported by Natalie Morales as the daughter of Vic and Mira Sorvino as Vic’s boss).

I am not saying you should avoid the film…it has it’s moments. It looks good and again, the cast is great. I enjoyed their interactions and performances. The movie is okay as a diversion for an hour and half of your time. I just feel like it could have been…more.

The Big Sick is a fictionalized account of the beginning of the relationship of comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife, writer/producer Emily V. Gordon. Kumail plays himself while Zoe Kazan takes on the fictional version of Emily.

Kumail grew up in Pakistan and his family wants him to marry a nice young Muslim Pakistani woman. He is not really sure what he wants or even believes. But he humors his mothers attempts at introducing him to women, tossing their pictures into a cigar box. And when he meets Emily, they initially agree that there will be no relationship beyond their first night. It is clear Kumail would like to continue the relationship, only declaring he is not looking for a commitment after Emily states she does not have room for a relationship right now.

But they are terrible at not dating and their relationship grows. As they get closer, Emily wants to introduce him to her parents. When she discovers he has never told his parents about her, the relationship hits a huge roadblock. Here is the thing…Emily’s anger is totally justified. And yet, it is hard not to understand Kumail’s reasoning. He knows he risks losing his family over Emily. The film is very careful about this. The family is not portrayed as villains in this regard. And that is a pretty tricky feat when your family is “standing in the way of love”. But I felt for his parents, especially as they are shut out from a lot of Kumail’s life. But early on it is established that one of his cousins was shunned by the family.

So, after they break up, Kumail tries to get on with his life. But one night he gets a call from Emily’s roommate. Emily is in the hospital and nobody is able to stay with her. She is less than pleased to see him, but when she is put into a coma, Kumail finds himself being drawn deeper into her life.

In a standard rom com, Emily would wake up and be super touched and they run off together. The Big Sick does not do this. After all, when she went into her coma, she still was angry. At one point, Emily tells Kumail that it great he had this awaking…but she was unconscious that whole time.

The Big Sick straddles that line of emotional drama and comedy better than some. And there are scenes that ripped my heart out. Kumail gets a call right as he is about to take the stage…and bombs in a fiercely awkward way. He stumbles through his jokes before giving into sorrow and the sense of powerlessness in the situation. I can tell you this, knowing something terrible has happened with someone you love and being stuck in your job? It is mind numbing.

The scenes between Kumail, Holly Hunter and Ray Romano (as Emily’s parents) are very good. They all connect and grow. There is one scene, when Hunter and Romano have gone to watch Kumail’s standup (much to his chagrin). At this point, her mother still does not trust him. She resents how he hurt her daughter. But when a frat boy starts heckling Kumail (in a most racist fashion), you see a new perspective growing within Hunter. She is ferocious in this scene.

Kumail and Emily make for a good writing team here, finding both humor in their experiences as well as raw emotion.

Big_Sick_Kumail_Emily — Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon

Maybe the film just connected with me in a way that I find it way better than it is. But I found the film both fun and heart wrenching.

Mike and Dave are brothers who party hard…so hard that their family is frustrated at how they ruin every even. To be allowed at their sister’s wedding, they are required to bring respectable dates. Mike and Dave get the idea to go on TV and put the call out to get some classy ladies. Alice and Tatiana are lazy who cannot hold a job, in part because they would rather lay around smoking weed. They see Mike and Dave and decide to con their way into a free Hawaiian vacation on Mike and Dave’s dime. Crazy adventures follow.

Well, more like “Standard Comedy Misadventures.” As you might suspect, the ruse is discovered, things fall apart and then the leads must fix their screw up. It is a pretty standard trope. The problem for this film is nothing distracts you from the highly predictable beats.

Most of the characters are very loose sketches. And while I suspect it is intentional, Adam Levine’s Mike is far less sympathetic than Efron as Dave. This is mirrored in Plaza’s Tatiana and Anna Kendrick’s Alice. But that ends up working against the film. While there are funny points, nothing makes the movie stand out. It is trying to be in the vein of Wedding Crashers, but feels like a film trying real hard to look like it is pushing envelopes…but even those moments feel heavily cliched.

The film had a lot of potentials, as it has an excellent comedic cast. I went in hoping to really enjoy this film as some crazy farce. Instead, I found long stretches where the film comes to a standstill. At barely over an hour and a half, this is not a good thing.

In the end, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates is a derivative comedy that is mildly amusing…but I suspect will largely be forgotten.

Tag: Kumail Nanjiani

Forced Friendship (Stuber, 2019)

Love Is Illness (The Big Sick, 2017)

Wedding Crashing (Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, 2016)