The Sunday Mail
Film Review
Tinashe Kusema
THE strength of a good stand-up comedy act lies in how it is able to serve up truths while making us laugh at ourselves and cringe at the same time.
Today’s comedians would do well to remember that, especially when the time comes for them to make a big jump from the stage to the small or big screen.
The last couple of years have seen a huge influx of stand-up comedians making the jump. I have no problem with that considering that my favourite television and film comedians have deep roots in the stand-up genre.
Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, the late Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle, Jim Carrey and even Will Smith have had some kind of stand-up comedy background.
The problem arises when they sell out and forget what brought them to the party. Take Joseph Glenn Herbert, or Jo Koy, as he is known on the stand-up comedy scene, for example.
The 51-year-old recently starred in his first big feature project in the Universal Picture comedy “Easter Sunday”. To say the film makes for a muted debut would be a gross understatement.
The film follows Joe Valencia (Koy), a struggling actor and comedian, who, on the cusp of a breakthrough, is forced to choose between spending the holidays (Easter) with his family and an audition of a lifetime.
After choosing to audition over a parent-teacher meeting for his son Junior (Brandon Wardell), Valencia decides to take his son home to visit his extended family in Daly City and spend the Easter weekend with them.
There, Valencia gets mixed up in a feud between his mother Susan (Lydia Gaston) and her sister Yvonne (Melody Butiu), while his cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero) goes on the run from a gangster Dev (Asif Ali) after he steals Manny Pacquiao’s beloved gloves from him.
He has to contend with the return of an old flame in Vanessa (Tiffany Haddish) and some long lingering resentment his son apparently holds for his father, always choosing work over family. Mix that with a celebration of the Filipino family culture, and you have a recipe for what should have been a good comedy.
While there are some good laughs and jokes, especially from the supporting cast, the film inadvertently fails.
It does not adhere to the thing that made Jo Koy’s act stand out in the first place. The celebration of the said Filipino culture is sacrificed for cheap humour and stereotypical jokes.
But what has stood out in the comedian’s career is his Filipino-American heritage and, more specifically, his mother. He often tells stories of how his mother raised him and some of her more humorous character traits.
Unfortunately, none of that appears in the film, except for some mild references. While the film does get credit for using a mostly Filipino-American cast, it all gets washed away for cheap gags that mostly do not land well.
On performance, only Jo Koy stands out. He brings the energy, humour and comic timing of his act onto the big screen.
The duo of Lou Diamond Philips and Haddish play exaggerated versions of themselves in the brief cameos.
Wardell is dull and unmemorable like Joe Valencia Jnr, and hardly matches the energy and performance of his love interest Eva Noblezada (Tala).
The fact that fellow stand-up comedian Jimmy O. Yang (Marvin), who is hardly in the movie for more than 10 minutes, is more memorable than the rest of the cast says a lot.
The film lacks a better and deeper exploration of the Filipino-American culture. However, I do not really blame Jo Koy, as the studio probably had a big say in the script and storyline.
Maybe, Koy could have been better served had he taken the Adam Sandler route and wrote his own story and funded the project himself.
But the film is not that bad.
In fact, it is better suited as a backdoor pilot for a sitcom or television show that features all the characters and actors. It does more than scratch the surface during its run.
For a debut project, Jo Koy does a good job in auditioning as a future leading man. I look forward to more projects from the actor that are more of him and less of Hollywood.
