The Big Sick does stand-up com­e­dy right by doing it wrong

“Any idiot can write voiceover nar­ra­tion to explain the thoughts of a char­ac­ter,” screen­writ­ing guru Robert McK­ee warns Char­lie Kauf­man in Adap­ta­tion. But what if that pro­tag­o­nist hap­pens to be an over­e­mo­tion­al stand-up in a roman­tic com­e­dy? Every­body knows the one about a com­ic vom­it­ing his or her inter­nal mono­logue on stage to a rap­tur­ous audi­ence, and when these tropes are overused, it’s the sto­ry­telling equiv­a­lent of gags about air­plane food.

Not so with The Big Sick. The coma-cen­tric dram­e­dy, star­ring and co-writ­ten by Kumail Nan­jiani, does stand-up right by doing it wrong. In real life, Nan­jiani is a hot joke-teller with a Com­e­dy Cen­tral spe­cial and a long his­to­ry on the New York cir­cuit. In the film, though, the actor plays an Uber dri­ver with a nail-bit­ing hob­by. He approach­es 10-minute night­club slots with a trem­ble instead of a swag­ger, and he mur­murs mate­r­i­al that’s believ­ably slop­py, sani­tised and imper­son­al. Due to his nerves, the micro­phone remains cra­dled in the stand.

The luke­warm per­for­mances are, of course, inten­tion­al. On the Nerdist pod­cast, Nan­jiani revealed that The Big Sick’s direc­tor, Michael Showal­ter, organ­ised a test shoot at a live venue. Nan­jiani did his usu­al rou­tine, crushed it, and was informed by Showal­ter it was too sharp to be used in the film. Thus, in the end prod­uct we wit­ness a pro sac­ri­fic­ing his ego and depict­ing the ama­teur he once was. ​“It was the worst fuck­ing thing,” Nan­jiani reflects on the expe­ri­ence. ​“It was by far the tough­est part.”

Telling­ly, the real Nan­jiani took inspi­ra­tion from Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al. Back in June he tweet­ed: ​“I start­ed stand-up cuz of Hugh Grant’s best man speech in the begin­ning. My first few com­e­dy years is me doing my best Hugh Grant.” In the clas­sic Richard Curtis/​Mike Newell rom-com, Grant’s bum­bling oaf stam­mers and stut­ters because it’s charm­ing and endear­ing. Like­wise, The Big Sick takes a tough career like stand-up and presents the view­er with some­one who feels the weight of every eye in the shad­ows. It’s rom-com 101: be relatable.

Nev­er­the­less, come­di­ans-turned-actors repeat­ed­ly stum­ble into the trap of over­selling their evening job. The Big Sick’s pro­duc­er, Judd Apa­tow, couldn’t resist it with Fun­ny Peo­ple, in which Adam San­dler gives a duff stand-up per­for­mance ear­ly on, only to have his mojo back with­in 30 min­utes in a moment that stinks of wish-ful­fil­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, in Top Five, Chris Rock plays a com­ic who, in his first gig in years, steam­rolls at the noto­ri­ous­ly intim­i­dat­ing Com­e­dy Cel­lar. Off-screen, Rock famous­ly work­shops mate­r­i­al for months before film­ing it, but his movie avatar may as well be liv­ing out a fan­ta­sy sequence from The King of Com­e­dy. It’s an act of fic­tion with­in a fiction.

Mean­while, in The Big Sick, Kumail faces a daunt­ing audi­tion for Montréal’s Just For Laughs fes­ti­val and final­ly taps into the kind of con­fes­sion­al mate­r­i­al that would elic­it groans from Robert McK­ee. A less­er screen­play would resort to over­writ­ten, sup­pos­ed­ly off-the-cuff one-lin­ers, the kind of bon mots one con­jures up days after­wards in ret­ro­spect. Instead, Kumail breaks down on stage, sobs into the micro­phone, and dies a thou­sand deaths.

Ulti­mate­ly, it comes down to hon­esty. The Big Sick brings Nanjiani’s mem­o­ries to life on the big screen in a way that feels fresh and authen­tic. Even the small­est details ring true (Bo Burnham’s careerist char­ac­ter, CJ, is pre­sum­ably a nod to TJ Miller), con­firm­ing once and for all that only stand-ups should play stand-ups. What’s more, the film astute­ly sneaks pol­i­tics into the stand-up are­na. Dur­ing a gig, a drunk stranger heck­les Kumail and shrieks, ​“Go back to ISIS!” Though it was writ­ten before Don­ald Trump’s elec­tion, this scene is espe­cial­ly time­ly: Hol­ly Hunter defends the Pak­istani-Amer­i­can com­ic with a rant that’s poignant and cathar­tic, but con­fess­es her shock that such open racism exists. Kumail, though, has wit­nessed it all too often.

By the end, Kumail has wok­en up and won back his comedic con­fi­dence, stem­ming from his attempts to mend his rela­tion­ship with Emi­ly. The pre­ced­ing two hours may as well have been a set­up for a heart­warm­ing, emo­tion­al punch­line. And why not, when the deliv­ery is as clean and pre­cise as this? It just goes to show what every work­ing stand-up intu­itive­ly knows: always end your set with the strongest material.