Sometimes setting and meeting modest goals is all a filmmaker needs to do.
Director Jay Chandrasekhar is best known for the raunchy "Super Troopers" movies he has made as part of the Broken Lizard troupe. The humor is more restrained this time, and the end result is strangely more fun this time around.
The director also doesn't ask his leading man, stand-up comic Jo Koy, to step outside of his comfort zone. This is also a wise move.
Elvis Presley was a capable actor, but fans understandably wanted to hear him sing.
Koy gets a few chances to sample what he'd do in a club, but the breaks are welcome. If you've missed his act or his talk show appearances, he has a couple of chances to demonstrate how he has built a following.
He's playing comedian Joe Valencia, whose career has landed him a catch phrase for beer commercials and the chance to possibly play a stereotypical Filipino-American role in a sitcom pilot. He's also struggling to connect with his son Junior (Brandon Wardell), who resents Joe for missing school appointments for auditions.
To be fair to Joe, the older man hasn't abandoned his progeny as Joe's own dad did and is hustling to afford Junior's pricey Los Angeles prep school.
When Joe isn't dealing with outrageous demands from his sleazy agent, his nagging mother (Lydia Gaston) is hounding him to come home to the Bay Area suburb of Daly City for Easter Sunday.
While the trip offers him a chance to finally connect with his resentful son, his mom and his aunt (Tia Carrere) are feuding, his cousin Eugene (Eugene Cordero) has gotten both of them in hock to a loan shark (Asif Ali).
Joe loves his family, but they may be the death of him.
Screenwriters Kate Angelo and Ken Cheng give Joe a quirky but believable extended family, but the loan sharing subplot seems a tad cartoonish. Frankly, it's more entertaining to learn about Joe's upbringing and culture than it is to watch him and Eugene try to outwit the gangsters.
It's also refreshing to see celebrity cameos that don't slow down the film. Lou Diamond Phillips seems to enjoy poking fun at himself, and Tiffany Haddish brings her A-game as a cop whose history with Joe could pose even more challenges for the struggling comic. She's only in a couple of scenes, but every word that emerges from her mouth elicits chuckles.
Because so many films aim low and hit nothing, it sometimes seems like a miracle what Chandrasekhar did by turning down the raunch and adding a bit more heart.