Film Review: "The Wedding Banquet" (2025)
Andrew Ahn brings a deft touch to this fun and deeply poignant of the 1993 Ang Lee film.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.
These days it can be quite easy to get sick of the seemingly never-ending barrage of remakes and reboots that Hollywood is intent on producing. In large measure, such distaste is justified, since it’s the exceedingly rare remake that actually manages to do something interesting or compelling with its source material. A notable exception to this trend, however, is the new version of The Wedding Banquet. A remake of Ang Lee’s film of the same name, this time around it’s directed by Andrew Ahn (of Fire Island Fame), with a screenplay by Ahn and James Schamus (who also co-wrote the original film). This is a remake as it should be done, striking the right balance between fidelity to the original and crafting a story and an ethos that is all its own.
In broad strokes the plot is roughly similar, in that it involves a gay couple who masquerade as straight, an attempt to get a green card, a baby or two, and an old-fashioned Old World family. However, this time there are not one but two queer couples–Chris and Min (Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan) and Lee and Angela (Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Train)--and two parental figures, one of whom is Angela’s mother, May Chen (Joan Chen) and the other of whom is Min’s grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-jung). It all makes for a lot of fun and also some heartbreak, though it all ends up coming out alright in the end.
It probably goes without saying, but the cast is universally excellent. Bowen Yang once again demonstrates that he is a true gift to comedy and deserves a lot better than what he usually gets from Saturday Night Live. His Chris is someone who can land a zinger with the best of them, yet there’s a lot of self-loathing and self-criticism there, too. He struggles to understand why someone like Min would be with him and, when the latter proposes, Chris rejects him, a decision that has far-ranging consequences, particularly since Min then proposes to Angela, hatching a plan whereby he’ll pay for Angela and Lee’s fertility treatments while marrying her will give the green card he needs to keep from having to return to Korea.
Han Gi-chan is remarkably soulful as Min, and there’s a certain wide-eyed innocence to his performance that makes us love him from the first moment that we meet him. It’s clear that he really does love Chris, for all that the other man goes out of his way to push him away. For her part, Kelly Marie Tran is perfect as Angela, a young woman who has had a lot to deal with when it comes to her personal life, and I particularly enjoyed the scenes between her and Joan Chen, and the two of them bring out the many textures, complexities and difficulties that almost always attend a mother/daughter relationship. Any queer person who has had a difficult conversation with their parents about their sexuality will feel a familiar pang at watching these scenes.
I’ve long been in awe of Lily Gladstone. She’s one of those actresses who is perfectly at home in both comedy or drama and, though her acting style can fairly be termed understated, there’s something remarkably intense about it, too. It’s precisely this intensity that endows her character with her own uniquely poignant arc. For her, having a family is not just a dream or a want; it’s a means of keeping her heritage alive. As a member of an Indigenous people whose homes have repeatedly been colonized and taken over, having a child to whom she can pass her beloved house is freighted with powerful and potent significance.
One of the things I loved the most about The Wedding Banquet was just how skillfully it moves between emotional registers. It is without doubt a hilarious film, and watching a group of queer folks frantically try to de-gay their house is always going to get a laugh out of me. Moreover, these sequences always remind us just how indelibly queerness is wound into our daily lives, right down to the way that we decorate our homes. When you’re a member of a group whose very existence is constantly called into question–if not outright condemned–making a home for yourself and your queer family is itself a radical act. Just as funny, and significant, are the many conversations about sex, all of which highlight just how bizarre and delightful gay sex has always been, particularly once Angela and Chris sleep together, which leads to her getting pregnant.
At the same time, The Wedding Banquet also grapples with some pretty weighty stuff, and there are some moments that are sure to hit you, as they did me, right in the feels. Some of these involve the two queer queer couples at the film’s center, but just as important are those involving Min’s formidable grandmother, Ja-Young, who immediately sees that Min and Angela aren’t really in love. The scene in which she essentially calls them all for thinking such a hare-brained scheme could work is a delight, in no small part because it pokes fun at the rom-com setup that motivates both this film and its predecessor. Youn Yuh-jung shows once again why she is one of her generation’s most formidable talents, and there’s a world of feeling in her every gesture.
For me the film’s most devastating moment comes when Ja-Young essentially gives her blessing to Min to live his life as a gay man, with all of the complexity that entails. It’s a moment that is powerful not just because it resonates so strongly with me–as many of you know, I was absolutely devoted to my grandmother and still struggle with her absence even four years after her death–but also because it’s clear that, for Min, escaping his family was the only way he knew to live the life that he wanted for himself. She, however, has more than a few surprises and, while she might not ever entirely be able to understand him as a gay man, what she can do is offer him the love, compassion, and life that she couldn’t have. Rather than forcing him to continue living his life as a lie, rather than forcing him to fit into the mold that his family has crafted for him, she offers him a wonderful and joyous opportunity to live his life on his own terms. It’s a radically joyful moment even if, at the same time, one can’t help but be sad that she didn’t have this chance, that she has instead had to spend her life with a man she doesn’t love.
There’s also something especially touching about the film’s final moments, which show us that these four incredibly messy people have, somehow, managed to create a life for themselves and their babies–in addition to Angela’s kid, Lee also finally gives birth as a result of a long-overdue fertility treatment–one in which they have all managed to find their own little slice of happiness. In a world like the one in which we now all find ourselves, one in which far too many people are actively trying to destroy queer lives or are turning a blind eye to the destruction unfolding, moments like this one remind us that it’s still possible to find hope. As the onslaught against queer people, their lives, and their happiness continues, movies like The Wedding Banquet will, I suspect, become all the more valuable and important.
Suffice it to say that I loved this film. Like its predecessor, it manages to leaven its drama with light touches of comedy, and it takes the bare bones of the original story to speak to the contemporary world in which we live, in all of its queer beauty and complexity.