Movie review
March 30, 2017 · 120 min · R
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
The Big Sick is a 2017 romantic comedy-drama based on the real courtship of Pakistani-American comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon. It depicts their relationship strained by his traditional immigrant family's expectations of arranged marriage and career conformity, then tested further when Emily falls into a coma from a rare illness. The narrative features recurring scenes of cultural family pressure and personal choice in an interracial context, presented through humor and emotional family reconciliation rather than overt messaging.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Big Sick.
Woke representation / casting
Authentic casting perfectly matches the real interracial story of a Pakistani immigrant family and white American girlfriend with no audience-visible forced diversity, race swaps, or mismatches.
Woke political dialogue
Occasional light comedic jokes about racism and family cultural pressures; no activist speeches, identity-politics monologues, or explicit ideological content.
Identity-driven story themes
The story engine repeatedly centers Kumail defying his Pakistani family’s arranged-marriage demands and cultural conformity to pursue a white American partner and stand-up career; this creates a clear, recurring tension favoring individual choice over conservative family norms that many viewers notice as central.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Comedic ribbing of restrictive immigrant family traditions and mild American prejudice; no modern activist reframing of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, capitalism, colonialism, or Western institutions as flawed systems.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Almost no anti-woke or “too woke” backlash; film widely embraced as authentic personal comedy with only weak, progressive “not woke enough” complaints about female portrayals that are disregarded per scoring rules.
Creator track record context
Apatow and Nanjiani show mild liberal leanings in broader work or statements, but both explicitly framed this project as non-political personal storytelling with no pattern of activist or identity-driven output driving the film.
Production
