"Easter Sunday" - Film Review
Easter Sunday could have been the Filipino version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It’s an Easter celebration rather than a wedding, but Easter Sunday’s Jo Valencia (Jo Koy) has a lot in common with My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Portokalos (Nia Vardalos). They both marry people their families don’t support, have careers that go against the grain, and, at the end of the day, really do love the people they’re related to. So where did Easter Sunday go wrong?
Jo is on the precipice of finally making it big in Hollywood, but his success comes at the worst possible time. His son, Junior (Brandon Wardell), isn’t doing well in school and has a parent-teacher conference that he begs Jo to attend. Junior thinks Jo will be able to smooth things over, but Jo misses the meeting to go to a big sitcom callback. In an effort to make it up to Junior, Jo decides the two of them will roadtrip to Daly City to attend his family’s Easter dinner.
Universal Pictures
Part of what makes My Big Fat Greek Wedding so endearing is that it’s very specific to a culture, but speaks to families everywhere. They’re complicated, confusing, and joyous. Even though the Portokalos family doesn’t always agree on things, there’s always an undercurrent of love in evidence. That same warm feeling does not carry over to the Valencia family of Easter Sunday. The film’s attempts at comedy are grounded in rudeness, with characters making cheap jokes and punching down at their relatives’ attributes or personalities.
Easter Sunday isn’t confident enough to let the film be character-driven. Instead of using the chaos of an Easter family get-together as a conduit for growth, the film does a hard pivot to a heist-adjacent storyline. Suddenly, Easter dinner is on the back burner and the focus is on a car chase, a celebrity cameo, and a shootout. How and why the production team decided this film needed something more than interpersonal family drama remains a mystery.
Universal Pictures
When Eva Noblezada’s character is introduced, it’s as if the gray skies have parted and there’s finally something interesting at work in the film. She brings a much-needed liveliness to what is an otherwise stilted group of performances. Her role as a love interest for Junior is too small to change the course of the movie, but during the brief time she's on screen it feels like a different movie. Unfortunately, Easter Sunday is Koy’s movie. It is Jo Valencia the audience is first introduced to and whose journey is the focus, but it’s too hefty a burden for him to bear.
Koy has made his name in the world of stand-up comedy, but he doesn’t have much experience in scripted work. He’s been in a supporting role, but Easter Sunday is fully about Koy’s character. It’s a position Koy doesn’t seem too comfortable in as the movie begins. He’s stiff until the script finds a way to put a microphone in his hands and essentially let him perform a mini-standup set. Suddenly, Koy is an entirely different performer. Whether you find his brand of stand-up comedy funny is an entirely different matter, but Koy is clearly in his element.
Instead of the charming, well-meaning mess of a family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Easter Sunday is focused on an irredeemably dysfunctional family. It’s no wonder Jo wanted to skip this dinner.
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