Kumail Nanjiani has become more of a focal point in pop culture as of recent. In the last five years he has starred in Silicon Valley, a tv show on HBO, and now he has been given movies to star in, starting with The Big Sick, a movie where he literally stars in it because it is about his life. That movie and Silicon Valley received such positive feedback that it has allowed him to get other starring rolls in films like Stuber and Netflix’s The Love Birds. It seems like he has potential, but his two most recent films have brought that into question for me.
The Big Sick is a rom com about Kumail and a girl he starts to date, Emily, but due to cultural differences and a lack of communication they break up. This leaves them both distraught, but neither of them is actively trying to fix the relationship. Then tragedy strikes leaving Emily with a severe medical problem, her friends do not know who to call, and they have a big exam coming up the next day so they call up Kumail to go and keep an eye on her. Her condition worsens and is placed into a medically induced coma, and her parents arrive and give Kumail the cold shoulder due to the recent break up. That is the main synopsis of the movie, I will not spoil it. Thanks to my Mom, I have some good background knowledge in late 90s and early 2000s rom com movies, so this is reminiscent of While You Were Sleeping, a story of a woman who ends up a part of a family and claiming to be engaged to a comatose patient she helped save from being hit by a train, then he wakes up and is unaware of all that went on while he was “sleeping.” Truly a classic.
This movie is by far his best performance and story line. He does an excellent job of discussing problems that might occur in life like ethnic differences in relationships, he is a Muslim from Pakistan with very strict parents that are trying to arrange him a marriage, but Kumail is trying to find his own way and date who he wants, but he does not want to lose his family. When Emily finds this out, it causes them to break up because Kumail had not even mentioned her to his family, and he continued to take the meetings with his potential brides. An extremely hard topic to address in a comedic and serious way that they capture perfectly. They also intertwine other family dynamics and relationship dynamics about having to overcome problems that occur in long lasting marriages, this being portrayed by Ray Romano as Emily’s dad, who is excellent in this role. The movie manages to rip the viewers heart out and fill it up with joy as it vacillates throughout the story line. I highly recommend watching this!
This rom com masterpiece is contrasted poorly with Stuber and The Lovebirds. First, The Lovebirds, a romantic comedy about a couple about to break up that get caught up in a murder investigation that they feel like they are the primary suspects and need to solve themselves, so that they do not get prosecuted. Now after seeing multiple commercials for this movie in theaters, I was excited to see it. I thought it was going to be great, but when it came out on Netflix, it was not as great as I had expected. It hit a few good points in the preview as suggested, but there were so many down points where the comedy did not hit like it was supposed to that I ended up more disappointed than truly enjoying it. This is similar to Stuber, this movie got a lot of commercials last summer, and it seemed like it was going to be pretty funny, but at the end of the day, it could not get me to the theaters to actually see it, and it ended up flopping at the box office sadly. Now after watching it on demand, it was nothing amazing, but it does say something about contemporary comedies, they must truly be great to be box office draws. Too often now, the comedies are ruining their movies by showing all their best material in the previews. They end up spoiling their better parts, this can draw more people to theaters initially, but I think in the long run, it ends up hurting the movies more than helping them. If they just had previews displaying more medium comedic moments people will still go to see it and come out happier and with higher reviews knowing that there were more funny moments than just what appeared in the previews. It is definitely a hard line to walk now knowing how much media we are constantly being presented with to distract us, so the companies feel like they need to show their hand to really get our attention, but I think it is taking away from the overall theater going experience, especially when it comes to comedies. These two comedies are at least worth the watch, but not worth revisiting after that.
Finally, in Silicon Valley Kumail Nanjiana is not the star of the show, but he is one of five. He plays a key role in the story, but he is not the lead. It is the story of a tech company in San Francisco trying to make it to the top, but with a multitude of obstacles that come in the way. It lasted from 2014 till 2019, I started to watch it during quarantine, and it is great. It does not quite hold up to the goliaths of The Office and Parks and Rec., but it is in the tier right below them. It is an HBO show, which basically means it is going to be good. The show seems to be relatively realistic as to the problems a company run into, while displaying comedic elements fully. Nanjiana does an excellent job in this show playing his role as a cider that helped with the founding of the company. The show would definitely not be as good without his presence conflicting with that of his counter partner in coding.
In short, if you read this far, you need to watch the Big Sick, if you enjoy movies, especially rom coms, and you should also watch Silicon Valley. The other two are worth a watch but come nowhere close to a pantheon of comedies.
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