Easter Sunday

It's the first major studio comedy about a Filipino-American family featuring a nearly-all Filipino cast, and was shepherded to the screen with the help of ...

Although Joe is burdened by his mother’s hectoring disapproval and Eugene’s terrible business schemes (in this case, a “hype truck,” a phrase that’s repeatedly bellowed by Cordero) and his son’s irritation with his work-related absences, the characters in “Easter Sunday” go out of their way to express the greatness of Joe, and by extension Jo Koy. “Easter Sunday” suffers from various other maladies, minor and major: a bland visual palette and a bafflingly stilted editing rhythm, both of which can’t completely be explained away by the COVID production; an inexplicable car chase, which seemingly exists to highlight the visual comparisons between Koy and Vin Diesel (they’re both bald, you see); and a halfhearted emphasis on shortsighted industry racism, complete with pulled punches and stale details. At one point, “Easter Sunday” stops dead for Joe to launch into a stand-up routine at his family’s church that’s so uproarious, at least judging by the (real and possibly foley) laughter, that people empty their wallets into the collection plate. These include Joe and his cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero) trying to pawn a pair of stolen Manny Pacquiao’s gloves while evading their maniacal owner, a feud between Valencia’s mother and his aunt Tita Theresa (Tia Carrere, notably playing a Filipina for the first time in a career spent playing different ethnicities), the strained relationship between Joe and his son (Brandon Wardell), and a potential sitcom deal that might collapse if Joe doesn’t agree to play a role with a stereotypical accent. Now, he has lent his perspective to “ Easter Sunday,” a new comedy starring Koy as Joe Valencia, a version of himself, who returns to the Bay Area for the eponymous holiday to deal with his extended Filipino family. Billed as a “love letter to the Filipino-American community,” “Easter Sunday” certainly earns its bona fides for elevating a historically underrepresented community to the big screen.

The stand-up makes significant representational strides with this big-screen, Filipino-focused comedy, but crime subplots undercut its cultural insights.

This deserved to be a big theatrical event, but this particular holiday will all too easily be forgotten. The movie’s commitment to actually being funny always feels right around the corner, instead relying too frequently, and lazily, upon the overlapping, well-established and yet under-explored threads of family drama that give the film structure. Instead, the film invests screen time in an increasingly absurd subplot involving Joe’s cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero), who invested start-up funds from Joe into what Eugene calls a “hype truck,” rather than the taco truck that the two of them agreed upon.

The typically funny Filipino American standup's smart and loving observational comedy falls flat in inoffensive PG-13-rated "Easter Sunday."

A subplot revolving around Joe’s hustling cousin Eugene (who turned his food truck into a “hype truck”), the Filipino boxing legend Manny Pacquiao’s boxing gloves and a local hood by the name of Dev Deluxe (Asif Ali) is great on the communal reverence for the PacMan but winds up being silly. For all the food jokes, the bickering family scenes, a winking cameo by Lou Diamond Phillips and a divinely spooky Baby Jesus statuette, it was not to be. Instead of character and chemistry, the film employs a series of running gags meant to support the star’s likability and not compete with his wisecracks. Although his R-rated comedy is great, that “Easter Sunday” is more sweet than tart isn’t the issue. Joe takes the bait, the mic and delivers a homily that has them chuckling in the pews. When we meet him, Joe has an important audition for a TV show, one that could take him to the next level.

Los Angeles (AP) -- For a comedy, Jo Koy's new movie “Easter Sunday” had a lot of waterworks.

'I'm getting goosebumps,' actor Rodney To quips as he walks toward Sharon.

Anna Liza Recto, one of the film’s producers, accompanied the actress at the after-party. Sharon is slated to star in The Mango Bride, the much-awaited film adaptation of Marivi Soliven’s acclaimed novel. Tia Carrere, who stood out in her red modern terno by Oliver Tolentino, Tiffany Haddish, Eugene Cordero, and Lou Diamond Phillips grooved to the music as the Jabbawockeez danced.

All the Titos, Titas, Kuyas and Ates made a trek to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre (TCL Chinese Theatre) where the world premiere of Fil-Am comedian Jo Koy's ...

Joining Lee later in the night was actor Jason Rogel ("Raven's Home," "Kevin from Work"). As LA-based Joe Valencia, Jo Koy is trying to land a role as his mom demands him to come home and spend the Easter weekend with the family in Northern California. For her, my meeting Sharon Cuneta tonight is the highlight of my career!" Cuneta, who was elegant in an all-black suit with gold necklaces, became the most sought-after guest at the party. The 51-year-old comedian told the audience, "We all deserve this spotlight. When I brought my son to the Laugh Factory, she would hold my son."

A boisterous extended clan gathers for a family holiday, launching the requisite arguments, hurt feelings, grudges, inside jokes, laughter, love, ...

Easter Sunday comes, and Joe heads up the California coast to Daly City and the Filipino American neighborhood where his mom and her sister, Teresa (Tia Carrere, who has said this is her first Filipino role in a 40-year career), are each planning holiday meals. (Couldn't they have given her more bars?) Noblezada’s unforced delivery makes her scenes a highlight in a film that overall relies too heavily on broad comedy. Joe (unsurprisingly) misses the school meeting but makes the audition, only to be told that they love him but want a “half-Filipino accent” — even though it’s an accent he doesn’t have. Speaking of humanity, the lovely Eva Noblezada projects it beautifully as Tala, a romantic interest for Junior — a confident young woman who shows the LA-raised boy some of the values around family that she’s learned in Daly City. The writing could surely be sharper and the ending is more than a little sappy. His son, Junior (a sweetly goofy Brandon Wardell) needs his presence at a school meeting to discuss mediocre grades.

Jo Koy and co-star Lydia Gaston talk about the importance of representation in "Easter Sunday."

“You’re going to get it.” “It was just so real to life that when we said ‘cut,’ I started tearing up,” Koy said. “Thank God we got to do a movie like this together and finally play something where the character description is just ‘Filipino,’” Koy said. If “Easter Sunday” sounds specific that’s because it is. “I was relating to those stories mainly because there were no Filipino comics out there telling their story.” “I would watch ‘West Side Story’ all the time and listen to the music. He plays Joe Valencia, a comedian, aspiring TV actor and single dad in Los Angeles who takes his teenage son upstate to visit his family for Easter Sunday, “the Super Bowl of holidays” in Filipino culture. “Hollywood wasn’t being specific for anybody (when we were coming up),” Koy said. “It was always hard for me to get this story across, but you just keep doing it and finally you land a special and then someone like Steven Spielberg is like, ‘Oh, I love that story. “There was no representation,” he said during a recent interview with cleveland.com. “And even if you tried to represent, they wouldn’t let you. Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar (“Super Troopers”), the film is based on Koy’s life experiences. No one’s going to get it.”

Wondering if the comedy film Easter Sunday starring Jo Koy is available for subscribers to stream on Netflix? Don't worry, we've got you covered!

There is no shortage of side-splitting cinematic comedies ready to experience now on the streamer. Things don’t go as planned, and the heartwarming hilarity that ensues with the silly shenanigans the characters engage in make Easter Sunday a gut-busting good time fans of comedy will not want to miss. Some of these wickedly funny titles include The Man From Toronto, Don’t Look Up, Thunder Force and Murder Mystery.

The entire cast is excellent and it is a pleasure to see their jubilance about in bringing their culture on screen. That shines forth even in the script's ...

And anyone who has a family will identify with the generational conflicts over what constitutes success and the importance of security. And Nick keeps calling about the job, finally telling Joe he has to fly back to LA immediately for a meeting with the showrunners. Joe’s cousin Eugene ( Eugene Cordero of “The Good Place”) has taken the $20,000 Joe gave him to buy a taco truck and instead bought something called a Hype Bus. The loan shark who provided the cash for inventory ( Asif Ali as Dev Divine) insists on being repaid immediately. Koy plays Joe Valencia, an LA-based stand-up comic and would-be actor best known for a series of beer commercials with the catchphrase “Let’s get the party started, baby!” That job has ended and he is hoping to be cast as the wacky neighbor in a new sitcom so he can make enough money to support his family. The very funny stage routine of Filipino-American stand-up comic Jo Koy is unevenly brought to the screen in “Easter Sunday,” with a lot of jokey family conflicts and some slightly less jokey encounters with menacing guys with guns. Joe also realizes he has not paid enough attention to his teenage son, Junior ( Brandon Wardell), so the two of them drive up to Daly City together.

The film was no ordinary job for the comedian and the rest of the cast. The magnitude of being on a mostly Filipino set led to happy cryfests, Koy said.

"I see that with a lot of Filipino families and I wanted to show the world that's how important this is to us." He envisioned a mix of Ice Cube's "Friday" and the holiday flick "It's a Wonderful Life." A producer, too, Cheng wrote it in 2020 during the coronavirus-induced lockdown. "A lot of that is how enthusiastic everyone was about building a movie around Jo." Filipino culture and history have been gaining more mainstream visibility in recent years, mostly because of decades-long activism by Filipinos. Hollywood is populated with notable half-Filipino actors like Vanessa Hudgens and Darren Criss. But Koy is the one leaning into his heritage in his work. "Some of them I wanted to call them and be like 'Hey, man! For example, he wanted a scene in "Easter Sunday" showing the family packing customary balikbayan boxes. And that's like insanely fast," Cheng said. She never saw that before," Koy, 51, told The Associated Press (AP). "We all just kind of like teared up and just celebrated together because it's like 'OK, this is going to be one of many moments up here.'" The production comes at a time when Filipino American food, history and advocacy are increasingly emerging into the zeitgeist. The film was no ordinary job for the comedian and the rest of the cast. DreamWorks/Universal is touting "Easter Sunday," which opened in theaters on Friday (Saturday in Manila), as the first big studio movie with an all-Filipino ensemble.

Jo Koy stars as a struggling comedian who is balancing his acting career with the demands of his son and mother.

But things veer a bit off course with a subplot involving an illegal scheme and neighborhood goons. “Easter Sunday” has all the makings of a rollicking family comedy: The protagonist is a struggling actor and comedian with wacky relatives and a rocky relationship with his son. Directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, the movie finds Joe Valencia (Jo Koy) trying to get his career off the ground as producers pressure him to put on a Filipino accent to book a major role.