Once upon a time in Hollywood…
To gain credence into Tinsel Town, a wannabe big-shot sells out his family, his heritage, and everything he supposedly holds dear. And yet, he gets exactly what he wants and is loved by all. The end.
Enter Joe Valencia.
Easter Sunday, comedian Jo Koy’s name-above-the-title foray into the Dream Factory, purports to be a celebration of Filipino culture. And Koy is poised to get that party started. His stand-up routines that poke fun of Filipino lifestyles have played to packed houses for years. As the movie’s opening clip demonstrates, Koy cum Valencia displays charm, dishes out one-liners, and delivers a snarky crack to diffuse any situation.
Unfortunately this direct translation from stand-up to the silver screen means that, as Valencia, Koy plays for the converted — those insiders who are already in the know and get the jokes. Everyone else is left with a conventional moral, that “family is a mess,” which isn’t even worth a spoiler tag. Instead, Valencia touches the trappings of what it means to be a Filipino in the U.S., but his one-track, heavy-handed motivation to get a laugh-a-second renders his family and their heritage into one shallow joke.
Family is messy, and the film suggests that everyone needs a cold dash of perspective. Joe is torn between clinching the part of sidekick Jack in a sitcom, Great Scott, provided he resorts to a stereotypical “halfway Filipino” accent (Sadly, accents do raise the dial on the Laugh-O-Meter; Indian actors use European accents to avoid turning their characters to one-gag Apu Nahasapeemapetilons for whites). Joe’s mother, Susan, and his aunt, Teresa, need to poke their heads out of their overheated kitchens and patch up some bad blood between them. His son, Joe Junior, needs to distance himself from his white mom and reconnect with his Filipino roots. To bring everyone back together, the film pulls the heart string via the stomach.
Masarap
The credo “Food is life” can describe Filipinos, but it also applies to everyone else. The film missteps by going for guffaws instead of demonstrating why Filipino cuisine is special. Sure, the jokes are infectious — food is not just life, but a source of laughter in any culture — but anyone who wants a deeper appreciation of Filipino culture is left in the dark. There are two meals in Easter Sunday: lunch and dinner. At noon, Tita Teresa hosts a feast, much to Nanay Susan’s dismay. Susan reasons that if everyone stuffs themselves now, no one would be hungry when it’s her turn to provide the eats. But the plot doesn’t evolve beyond that. Teresa hosts a Kamayan — a literal hands-on banquet where diners dispense with utensils and use their fingers. Using one’s hands symbolizes family togetherness and solidarity while paying tribute to the land where food comes from, but this flies under the radar. Few gather around the table; people just come and go. One cousin even uses his USPS-issued self-defense knives to stab some grub (this is a joke). A line or two might have spoken more about what the Kamayan — no one even mentions it by name — means to Filipinos than settling for yet another gag about whose adobo tastes better.
Eating with one’s hands also reflects cultural pride — predating the Spanish conquest in the 1500s and goes at the heart of Filipino ethnic heritage. But we don’t see that. The greatest sin the film — or maybe just the editors who cut the picture — does is that hardly anyone eats anything in the movie. Despite all the talk about food and preparing food and consuming food, nearly everyone abstains during Teresa’s lunch and Susan’s dinner. A lunch, a background shot shows one aunt popping something in her mouth, but no one really digs in.
At dinner, the plates are empty, even after saying grace. The men folk swill the beer instead and take the bottles with them when they get the party started, baby, at a karaoke sing-along. Her feast remains untouched, abandoned, and growing cold, which probably isn’t the effect Susan is going for.
Anak
Poor Joe Junior. Torn between two worlds: his white mom’s luxury lifestyle with a hockey bench-warmer stepdad and his dad’s Filipino culture he knows nothing about. The kid goes to an elite prep school in Beverly Hills where he doesn’t really fit in. He’s getting a C- in math and will probably get an F in photography (actor Brandon Wardell doesn’t know how to use a film camera, and none of the professionals among the production staff took time to teach him). Junior’s task is to take pictures that make use of depth of field or perspective or something, but aside from the fact that none of his shots do this, it is Junior himself who needs a new in-depth outlook on life.
Reality hits heard. “I’ve literally never seen this many Filipino in the same place before,” Junior admits at the family reunion at Daily City, far from his white suburbia. At the top of the list are Nanay Susan and Tita Teresa, who fight over the boy’s heart and mind. The two matriarchs trade quips and insults over empanada recipes and use Junior as a taste tester to declare the winner. But, ultimately, Junior turns down both his grandmother’s and grand aunt’s morsels.
Speaking Tagalog, Susan suspects that the boy’s “white mother” — yes, she uses a racial code in a movie that protests the way Hollywood’s discrimination against Filipinos — doesn’t feed him, but Junior actually does have food preferences. In his intro, Junior wants a burrito, but his main preference is his white stepdad’s veggie smoothie over any ethnic foods his dad’s family offers. Jealous Joe Senior pours the smoothie on their driveway to snub his ex-wife and their elitist, privileged white veganism. If food is rife with meaning, then the Valencias are in more trouble than they think.
Trust romance to correct Junior’s perspective on his family. He has no idea what a halo halo is, but he treats his love-at-first-sight sweetheart, Tala, to one on an impromptu date. Tala scores some points when she explains that the drink is a conglomerate between multiple cultures, with everything mixed into the purple concoction — although the uninitiated don’t actually get to know what any of that is (it’s ube — a uniquely Filipino sweet yam that predates the Spanish invasion). Tala says it tastes good, but her assertion and its history are irrelevant. Junior doesn’t bother to try it; the drink ends up in the trash so his dad can audition for The Fast and the Furious in the token action sequence.
Pasko ng Pagkabuhay
But it doesn’t stop with food. It’s Easter after all, and Joe’s narration tells us that Easter Sunday is the “Filipino Superbowl.” Although there aren’t any games, competition, or half-time show, except family drama and product placement. Oh, and mocking the religious event. Joe’s mom, Susan, keeps a Baby Jesus to watch over them. This makes sense, the Baby Jesus is actually a celebrated figure in Filipino spirituality. Historically, Baby Jesus, the Santo Niño de Cebú, is credited for converting the entire Filipino population to Catholicism in the sixteenth century. Colonialism, imperialism, or appropriation, a Judeo-Christian framework exists as a tenant of Filipino society. For anyone who assumes that indigenous Christians are a rarity in the Far East would be wildly mistaken. But Junior, ignorant as always, finds the doll super creepy. His dad agrees, and the duo stares at the figurine for several close-ups to elicit some giggles from the audience. That’s about it. While Susan proclaims that the doll will perform a miracle and save them (spoiler: it doesn’t), no one halts the laugh track to inform any non-Filipinos in the audience just why Baby Jesus — no one refers to it by its Filipino name — is where he is or why he’s important.
What religiosity there is for Easter Sunday is wrapped up in Joe Valencia as the actual savior. He co-opt a church sermon to do a stand-up shtick, leaving the audience and the pastor rolling in the aisles. He pays homage to Manny Pacquiao’s boxing gloves, which is more venerated than any artifact associated with Easter or Filipino spirituality. Again, the film assumes that the audience will know who Pacquiano is and — more importantly — why Pacquiano is central to their culture to the point where his birthday is the PIN for every Filipino ATM card. Joe insists that the boxing gloves must end up in Filipino hands, which itself sounds somewhat racist, especially since Joe spends most of his time — and his career — mocking his heritage.
In the end, it’s up to Joe to save the day. He can drive a Subaru as if he’s Vin Diesel. He dons those sacred gloves and knocks out the bad guy. Only he can resolve the tension between Susan and Teresa, while other relatives don’t even try. Even his abandoning the family to seal a deal for Great Scott is interpreted as an act of sacrifice for his son, and the final act makes Junior seem like the self-conceited jerk for wanting his dad to be in his life. Joe’s so wrapped up in his craft he insists on perfecting a five-second clothing store commercial while a gangster hunts his brother and his mom waits to serve dinner. Perhaps Joe hit Jo too close to home to suggest anything else. After all, the film prioritizes Jo Koy’s self-branding over Screenwriting 101’s template for a hero’s journey in which a flawed protagonist resolves conflict and emerges stronger than he was before. The film guts its own message by showing Mr. Valencia can do no wrong. Everyone else sees the light; Joe even gets the girl: thatbitchnessa@dailycity.gov.
In a moment of Filipino pride, Susan declares that the Philippines survived Spanish colonialization, American occupation, and even the Bitcoin bubble. In doing so, Filipino culture has become a halo halo — with everything mixed together under an ube swirl. We see that the Valencias love karaoke (they sing in English). They also partake in packing balikbayan boxes, an informal cultural rite of prosperity where ex-pats send American consumer goods and cash to family back home.
But for those in the dark, why these cultural facets are important and what they mean to Filipinos (the name balikbayan, while printed on the box, is unstated), are lost in translation. The movie settles for making Filipino-American choices the butt of jokes; if Joe Valencia can’t be serious for one moment, then why should anyone else?
The final scene and accompanying end credit show the Valencias have become the Kardashians: a wacky family turned reality show — sort of. In the end, the only thing left that is distinctly Filipino — and what the audience walks away with — is their accent.