Playing With Matches

In The Big Sick, Kumail Nanjiani shines as a Pakistani American comedian in Chicago who’s juggling his family’s efforts to arrange his marriage and a very American sweetheart of his own choosing.

- Ben Dickinson

Romantic comedies are a thematically irresistible but supremely delicate genre: Their success rides on whipping up a soufflé of plot elements that rises or falls on both the onscreen chemistry of the principal players and their ability to make us suspend our disbelief regarding the meticulously constructed circumstances surrounding their involvement. That’s kind of a tall order, which explains why the rare good ones always leave us jonesing for more.