“Easter Sunday” has a PG-13 rating, releasing Aug. 5.
Joe Valencia’s mom and aunt are fighting, but the drama reaches a new high when the two women show up to church wearing the same long maroon dress — and on Easter, to top it off.
Comedian Jo Koy’s debut movie “Easter Sunday” follows Joe (Koy), who returns home for Easter to his loving, but a little erratic, family. Over the course of the movie, they bicker, eat, drink, laugh and untangle the drama in the household.
The film takes viewers through the Filipino experience. Expect to salivate watching family dinner scenes with lavish spreads. Meanwhile, the church and family homes, which serve as the backdrop of the movie, encompass a sense of community. Since the movie is loosely based on Koy’s life, his family and Easter became a major part of the storyline.
Why Easter?
“That was the biggest holiday that we all shared as a family. It was bigger than Christmas, it was bigger than Thanksgiving,” Koy told the Deseret News in an interview.
All the relatives came, and there was church, food, entertainment, fighting and everything else in between, said Koy.
“There was no obligation of buying everyone gifts. It’s just Easter, you just bring up a tub of food,” he said jokingly. “‘Oh, by the way, let’s go to church because they got free doughnuts today. There are other Filipinos that are gonna be there, too. So let’s go see them.’”
“That was the whole point of pitching ‘Easter Sunday.’ It’s the best way to talk about family and culture. It’s also something that everyone, who isn’t Filipino, can relate to,” Koy added.
Church means a great deal to Jo Koy’s family
But that isn’t the only reason why this story is important to the comedian. His mother, an immigrant woman in America, struggled to find a sense of belonging.
This search was much harder at that time, when there was no Facebook or Instagram. His mother had to go out and find her people. She attended church every Sunday and, eventually, started approaching people who looked like her, while hoping that they were also Filipino.
Church gave Koy’s mother “a chance for my mom to be seen,” he said. “When you go to church, it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are, we all believe in Jesus. So today, we all get along.”
Attending church provided plenty of get-togethers and potlucks, where Koy got to meet other Filipinos and make friends. That’s the role faith played in his family and community.
Jo Koy hopes you relate to ‘Easter Sunday’
After talking about his culture on stage for so long in his stand-up comedy routines, Koy is happy to finally see the story come to life on the big screen.
“Instead of always getting the same response to my routine, which is, ‘Oh, it’s too specific. Not everyone’s going to get it,’” he said, “to now being able to put this out there and show the world that you will get it and you will relate to it felt good.”
He hopes that viewers see their own family in the film’s characters, opening “the door for a lot more other ethnicities out there that aren’t really heard.”