In Easter Sunday, Jo Koy makes a rough transition from stand-up to screen star - The A.V. Club

That makes Easter Sunday feel like an event in some respects—certainly as a landmark of Filipino representation in mainstream American culture, but especially right now as a title that Universal Pictures thought was better suited for the communal theatrical experience than the couch-bound comfort of a streaming service.

All that’s needed to make the experience complete is for the film to be funny.

However, their constant contact quickly becomes an obstacle between Joe and his teenage son Junior (Brandon Wardell), and eventually a major complication as he joins his extended family’s Easter Sunday celebration.

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 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.