This is a romantic comedy that follows the traditional rom-com narrative: boy meets girl, boy loses girl – well, you know the rest. But much else is a fresh approach to the genre.<\/p>\n
Above all, the lead characters are not traditional fare. The family of stand-up comedian Kumail (played by stand-up Kumail Nanjiani) are Pakistani migrants to Chicago, while (white) Emily (Zoe Kazan) – as the title forewarns – has some health issues. The script, by Nanjiani and his wife Emily V Gordon, is based on their real-life experience together as underlined by some photographs at the beginning of the credits.<\/p>\n
So this is an original twist on a very familiar genre and it works a treat. The characters are utterly believable and we root for them – not just the young couple but also her very different parents, ably portrayed by Ray Romano and Holly Hunter.<\/p>\n
The humour is understated but sharp, not least in its observations on Muslim families and in a brief discussion about 9\/11, and there is much inter-racial and inter-generational contrast in a world where everyone wants what\u2019s for the best but often disagrees on what that is. In short, the film is a gem and highly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a romantic comedy that follows the traditional rom-com narrative: boy meets girl, boy loses girl – well, you know the rest. But much else is a fresh approach to the genre. Above all, the lead characters are not traditional fare. The family of stand-up comedian Kumail (played by stand-up Kumail Nanjiani) are Pakistani […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21721,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21720\/revisions\/21721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}