The Big Sick was one of the biggest surprises of a movie I’d ever seen. I went from having minimal interest in seeing it to it being in contention for my favorite film of 2017 and it earned a spot in the latest revision of my Top 100. Star and writer Kumail Nanjiani had been on his way up and up, so I was excited to see him leading a big summer comedy (also was excited about seeing a brown dude on movie posters across town because yay diversity). Unfortunately this ended up being one of the biggest let downs I’ve felt in a while.
Nanjiani is an Uber driver hired by a cop (Dave Bautista) to drive him around town chasing bad guys. Really there’s nothing else you need to know about the premise, it basically all folds into that for a pretty wild action comedy. But for some reason, it just didn’t click for me.
As the film played out, the implausibility and absurdity of the story kept making me cringe. With each line Kumail delivered, I was hoping I’d bust my gut laughing like I did earlier this summer with his scene stealing role in the new MIB, but nothing happened. I wasn’t finding it funny. The people around me in the dine in theater thought it was hilarious, but nada on my end.
To be fair, there was some dine in distractions around me trying to use the gift card I was trying to use besides the usual distractions of food and waiters, so maybe I wasn’t quite on my concentration game. But that wasn’t the only problem. An action comedy like this relies on surprises: unexpected dialog, big out of nowhere stunt sequences, etc. Nothing was surprising me. Envelopes weren’t really pushed. It just fell flat.
Our two leads did have great bro chemistry, and I’d be happy to watch them in Stuber 2: Stuber Pool (and I will continue to look forward to everything Kumail does). This just wasn’t the right ride for me
Stuber – \m/ \m/