96 min | PG-13 | August 5, 2022 | Universal Pictures
Joe Valencia is a Filipino-American comedian chasing a sitcom deal in Los Angeles when his mother guilts him into driving home to Daly City for Easter. One reunion, one dysfunctional family, one absurd debt subplot, and ninety minutes of warmed-over gags. The mother is funnier than the movie.
Joe Valencia is a stand-up comedian stuck doing beer commercials and waiting on a network sitcom that keeps trying to flatten his act. His mother summons him home to Daly City for Easter, and he drags his teenage son Junior along to repair a relationship he keeps neglecting for his career. The film wants to be two things at once. It wants to be a warm Filipino-American family portrait, and it wants to be a broad comedy built on a cousin’s harebrained scheme involving a stolen prizefighter’s truck and a loan shark. Easter Sunday is really about a man performing a softened version of himself for everyone, and the movie commits the same sin by softening every edge that might have made it sting.
Jo Koy plays Joe with the easy charm of a working stand-up, and the film coasts on his likability even when the script gives him nothing. He is best in the quiet beats with Junior, where the comedian’s defensiveness cracks and a real father emerges. Lydia Gaston steals the picture as Susan, the mother whose guilt-trips land harder than any of the written jokes. Brandon Wardell plays Junior as a sullen kid finding his footing, and Eugene Cordero turns cousin Eugene’s debt panic into the engine that hijacks the back half. Tia Carrere brings a sharp edge to Tita Teresa, and Eva Noblezada and Asif Ali are stranded in subplots the movie cannot finish.
Jay Chandrasekhar directs the family scenes like a multi-camera sitcom, with flat coverage and reaction-shot rhythms that telegraph every punchline before it arrives. The script by Ken Cheng and Kate Angelo loads the dinner table with relatives and then has no idea what to do with them. The crime subplot exists only to manufacture a third act, and the chase that follows drains the warmth the kitchen scenes earned. The production design of the Valencia home does the heavy lifting, packing the frame with crucifixes, karaoke machines, and food until the house feels lived-in. The camera never finds a single image as specific as that clutter.
The film arrives as a milestone for Filipino-American faces on a studio screen, and it knows it. That awareness becomes a crutch. Easter Sunday treats representation as the achievement and stops there, mistaking a full table of recognizable types for characters. The specificity is all set dressing, and the comedy underneath is the same family-reunion machinery anyone has seen a dozen times. Joe spends the movie refusing to do a watered-down version of his life on television. The movie hands him exactly that version and calls it home.