“Easter Sunday” Review
Stand-Up Comedian Joe Valencia (Center) and his cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero) try to sell stolen boxing gloves to iconic actor Lou Diamond Phillips in “Easter Sunday.”
Dysfunctional families are as guaranteed as death and taxes, hence they’ve lent their way towards some fantastic comedies. Films like “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “The Family Stone” and “Crazy Rich Asians” all have marvelously shown the quirks and stress of families gathering for special occasions. While trying to be one of those films, “Easter Sunday” comes up short by being a comedy which has few laughs.
Joe Valencia (Jo Koy) is a comedian who is trying to make his way into television with some difficulty. On top of that, he’s not as present as he should be in the life of his son (Brandon Wardell). But when Easter Sunday comes around Joe decides to go spend the holiday with his rambunctious Filipino family and takes his son with him. However, once there, Joe must contend with his slacker cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero), a gangster (Asif Ali) who wants them both dead and the stress of a family holiday.
While the premise of the film seems all over the place, the actual product is also all over the place. “Easter Sunday” can’t decide whether it wants to be a heartwarming family dramedy or a ridiculous, over-the-top comedy. Now these two kinds of films aren’t mutually exclusive, but when you go back and forth, it’s hard to know whether to laugh at a scene or be moved. As such, the dramatic scenes of Joe connecting with his son or with his mother are lacking in emotional weight.
On top of that, the comedy itself falters with terrible running jokes. One of the biggest groaners comes from a beer commercial Joe starred in which is probably his biggest claim to fame. However, the commercial isn’t funny nor are people’s reactions to it. Whenever someone brings it up to Joe, he just shrugs it off while clearly hating it. That’s not funny. It would be much more enjoyable if he really hated the commercial and everytime someone brought it up it looked like a piece of him was dying.
When “Easter Sunday” does venture into ridiculous comedy, it gets pretty fun with Joe and Eugene doing some wild things like being in a car chase with Dev and trying to sell stolen goods to pay Dev back. However, it has very little to do with the holiday celebration making it a film with two different storylines and a disappointing payoff.
The actors in the film are clearly giving it their all and there are some funny performances from Lydia Gaston and Tia Carrere as Joe’s warring mother and aunt respectively. Their clashes over seemingly trivial things brings back everyone’s petty conflict with their sibling and is fairly funny. There are also some amazing cameos from Tiffany Haddish and Lou Diamond Phillips which livened up the film.
Ultimately, the idea of a stand-up comic and his family is a wonderful idea and has been used wonderfully in projects like “Seinfeld” or “Hacks.” It’s also admirable that a group of Filipino filmmakers came together to make a comedic film to represent their community like Nia Vardalos did with “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” There’s good ideas that make up “Easter Sunday” but, sadly, the follow through was less than desired.
