Review of The Big Sick (2017) by Postcynic — 16 Jul 2017

I saw this film because I’m a huge Kumail Nanjiani fan, but I found it disappointing. First of all, everything about it reeks of its producer Judd Apatow. And while I usually like Apatow’s films, his approach doesn’t work with this subject matter.

In addition, Nanjiani’s cerebral brand of humor gets dumbed down. But what bothers me above all is the fact that while the film pretends to be in part about “tolerance” and the way Nanjiani’s character strikes up a relationship with his comatose white girlfriend’s parents (and thus with middle-class white America at large), this is rendered possible only by the fact that his character renounces EVERYTHING about his Pakistani origins.

The film’s message seems to be: white Christian Americans can sympathize with Muslims and /or south Asian or middle Eastern types , but only if the latter reject everything about their own culture in order to assimilate completely to ours.

This is an empty sort of “tolerance” that allows for no compromise. The Big Sick lets middle class white Americans feel good about their “tolerance” while in reality not asking them to expand their imaginations at all.

And I say this as a middle-class white American myself.