The Big Sick

If comedy and tragedy were people, they'd be the lead characters in The Big Sick. Kumail Nanjiani (Kumail Nanjiani) (I'm not just repeating his name for the sake of it, he plays himself) is the stand-up comic whose life as a Pakistani immigrant in Chicago is a bottomless mine of hilarious cultural awkwardness, while therapist Emily Gardner (Zoe Kazan) is his foil: a pixie dream girl of the refreshingly non-manic variety for whom fate has Very Bad Things in store. Thrown together in an inevitable meet-cute, Kumail and Emily, in their guises as comedy and tragedy, enhance and feed off each other to create a romtragicom of surprising depth, pinpoint perception and deceptively powerful sweetness.

Nanjiani - who wrote The Big Sick with the real Emily, his wife Emily V. Gordon, about the turbulent first months of their relationship - understands the combined powers of comedy and tragedy better than most, and their script revels in the former for its first act before throwing an almighty spanner in the works and becoming something quite unexpected. When tragedy strikes, it isn't a cue for comedy to take a back seat but for it to evolve; to become a crutch, a unifier, a lubricant to ease the healing process.

The Big Sick isn't about comedy per se, but it uses it so deftly that its script deserves to be picked apart by future generations of comedians. Barely a joke goes by that's just there to provoke a laugh: every gag enriches the characters or wrings its context for added value. There's a 9/11 joke in there that would be amusing enough if you heard it at a gig, but delivered in the framework of the story it's possibly the funniest moment in cinema this year. And Judd Apatow's involvement as producer is barely noticeable in the best way: dick jokes, tedious fratpack back-slapping and shouting and swearing in place of actual humour are nowhere to be seen here (OK, there's shouting and swearing, but for once it's actually funny).

What it is about, quite shamelessly sentimentally, is family, and the intricate complexities thereof. The surreal nature of arranged marriages in Muslim culture is juxtaposed with the western ideal - which is laid bare as hardly any more likely to succeed - and the relaxed comfort of surrogate families, whether they're lifelong friends or just people thrown together by circumstance. That might all sound excruciatingly worthy and unfunny, but it really isn't: the supporting cast - including Holly Hunter, Ray Romano, Four Lions' Adeel Akhtar and Bollywood legend Anupam Kher - all chip in note-perfect performances that add individual brands of lols without resorting to stereotypes.

If there's a bum note then it's in the improbable swiftness with which one of the staple elements of the romcom is executed, but it's necessary to move the plot on before the already troubling two-hour running time swells any further. The Big Sick never outstays its welcome though, comfortably riding a wave of charm, wit and old-fashioned feelgoodery to find itself one of the year's best comedies. And, for that matter, tragedies.